Crumbly Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares

These were yummy, I will give them that. They were also pretty easy to throw together, two rounds in the food processor, but several baking steps. First the crust gets put together in the processor, then most of it pressed into the bottom of the buttered pan. The reserved topping gets baked for 12 minutes to give it a nice crunch. The recipe tells you to bake the crust in the pan for 30 minutes, but I read some reviews on epicurious and several people said that 30 minutes was way to long, so I went with their recommendation and baked it for 15 minutes. Next step is to make the pumpkin cream cheese filling (again in the processor and really quick) and bake that for 20 minutes. Then mix the sour cream topping in a bowl and put that on top of the cream cheese mixture and bake 5 more minutes. Cool the whole thing, then add the crunchy topping.

Easy to throw together and fairly quick too. The problem was getting the silly bars out of the pan. I tried a butter knife first, but it wouldn't cut through the crust on the bottom. I finally used one of Chris' rather sharp knives and managed to pry the bars out of there. I was worried that the crust would break people's teeth, but it was actually very tasty and not tough at all. weird. If I make this again I will definitely line the pan with tin foil so that I can pull the whole thing out of the pan to make cutting them easier. I suspect that would help the whole process a lot.