After the first day of the bar exam, my brain is mush and I’m bone-tired from being up since 5am, but…my stomach and tastebuds are happy. Very happy. These luscious, creamy chocolate cherry bars were meant to be a post-exam present to myself (bars to celebrate the end of the bar…heh heh heh), but I dipped in early. I couldn’t help it!
But it was so worth it — these bars are amazingly delicious, decadent, and so packed with chocolate-y goodness that I’m actually vibrating from the intense sugar/endorphin rush. Or maybe it’s the caffeine + lack of sleep. Whatever.
One day of the bar exam down, one more to go. Here’s to almost being done with the worst two days of summer ever. Good luck, everyone!
Ingredients:
- 1 sleeve Oreo cookies
- 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature and softened
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1/3 cup Nutella
- 1-1/2 cups chocolate chips + more for sprinkling
- 3 tbsp butter, melted
- 1 to 2 cups cherries, halved and pitted
- 2 tbsp sugar
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 400.
- In a small bowl, toss halved/pitted cherries with sugar.
- Spread the sugar-coated cherries in an even layer on a baking sheet, and stick them in the oven for about 10-12 minutes. Remove roasted cherries from the oven and set aside. Keep the oven on.
** Check on the cherries about 5 minutes in to make sure the sugar isn’t burning. - Place Oreo cookies in a gallon bag, zip, and roll over them repeatedly with a large rolling pin to get cookie crumbs for the crust.
- In a small bowl, mix cookie crumbs and melted butter until the crumbs take on a moist, sandy texture. Press crumbs firmly into the bottom of a pie dish. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove and set aside to cool.
- While your crust and cherries are cooling, whip cream cheese in a large bowl until smooth. Set aside.
- Using an electric beater, whip your cream in a separate bowl until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into your cream cheese mixture, until well incorporated and smooth.
- Melt chocolate chips, and carefully pour melted chocolate into your cream cheese/whipped cream filling. Add Nutella. Carefully stir until filling is uniformly chocolate-y.
- Spoon chocolate cream filling into your pie dish, over the now-cool cookie crust.
- Spoon roasted cherries (sticky juice and all) evenly on top of the chocolate filling.
- Sprinkle more chocolate chips all over the top of the cherries/cream.
- Refrigerate until ready to serve, then slice into bars and enjoy!
** You can also freeze these bars firm them up faster. They are better slightly soft, but are fabulous frozen as well.
Good luck on the bar!
Thank you!
fantastyczne ciasto! świetnie wygląda i na pewno smakuje wyśmienicie! pozdrowienia z mojej kuchni!
Thanks, Inka!
What a way to treat yourself! I could definitely eat a few of these! Good luck on the rest of the your exam! Hope you can finally get some sleep.
Thanks! I did finally get sleep and it was amazing 😉
Assuming your exams are over now, congrats on getting through it! I bet that was a pretty miserable couple days, but I also bet these bars perked things up a lot. 🙂 They look REALLY good, and I love the photos too.
Thank you! They definitely helped give me a nice sugar high for day 2 of the exam 🙂
I’m assuming your exams are over now so happy exams being over!! I feel your pain for studying and taking them. I still wake up with nightmares from it sometimes.
Haha, yeah…and considering this is my second bar exam, I’m going to have double the nightmares!
Good luck! And these look AMAZING!!
Thanks, Meagan! Loving your icebox cake, btw!
what size/shape pie dish is recommended?
I used a round dish, but a square one would work too.