Lemon Cream Cheese Bars

4.50 from 2 votes
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These easy lemon cream cheese bars are one of our new favorite desserts! Lemon-y and creamy cheesecake filling sits between a buttery crescent roll dough layer, making for a refreshingly sweet dessert.

Lemon cream cheese bars stacked 3 high.
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Creamy Lemon Cream Cheese Bars

Who loves a delicious dessert that’s ridiculously easy to make? We do! And you will too after one bite of these mouth-watering lemon cream cheese bars. This is a no-fuss, low-effort, easy dessert that tastes so good, you’d guess it’s gourmet.

Unlike traditional lemon bars, this recipe has a cream cheese filling that goes perfectly with the lemon flavor. Basically, it’s a match made in dessert heaven!

If you love lemon bars as much as we do, you’ll love our classic lemon bars and gluten-free lemon bars on our sister site, Fit Foodie Finds.

make ahead cream cheese bars!

These easy lemon bars are great for making ahead as meal prep. Just wrap each one up individually in plastic wrap, store it in the fridge, and you’ll have a delicious treat every day of the week.

Ingredients for lemon cream cheese bars.

Recipe Ingredients

This lemon cream cheese bars recipe uses simple ingredients that can easily be found at your local grocery store or sitting in your pantry. 

It really doesn’t require much to make these lemon bars amazing, so you mind as well go for it! The following is all that you need to make this easy recipe:

  • crescent roll dough
  • cream cheese
  • powdered sugar
  • granulated sugar
  • lemon
  • vanilla extract
  • butter
Crescent roll dough in a casserole dish.

How to Make Lemon Cream Cheese Bars

Ready to try out one of the BEST lemon recipes? Here’s how to make delicious lemon cream cheese bars.

PREHEAT OVEN

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease your casserole dish with 1 tablespoon of butter.

PREP THE DOUGH

Open one tube of crescent rolls. Cover and flatten the dough to the bottom of the casserole dish, using your fingers to crimp together the seams.

MIX THE FILLING

In a large bowl, use a hand mixer to mix the cream cheese, powdered sugar, granulated sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla until combined.

ASSEMBLE YOUR LEMON BARS

Transfer your cream cheese mixture onto the top of the crescent roll dough in the casserole dish. Spread it evenly until the dough is completely covered. Then, cover the cream cheese mixture with your second tube of crescent rolls, pinching together the seams as you did the first time.

Next, melt the remaining butter and brush it on top of the crescent roll dough. Top it off by sprinkling on your remaining sugar.

BAKE & REFRIGERATE

Now it’s time to bake! Place your cream cheese lemon bar in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Once finished baking, refrigerate it for at least 2 hours before slicing and serving. Enjoy!

Lemon cream cheese bars cut into squares.

Storage

If by some miracle, you have creamy lemon bars left over, then you should store them in the fridge.

Just place the bars in an airtight container if you’ve already sliced them into squares. Otherwise, you could cover the pan you cooked them in with foil and store them for later.

Lemon cream cheese bars in a casserole dish.

To Freeze Lemon Bars

Yes. However, we advise that you only freeze them if you’re using full-fat cream cheese. You can either freeze the whole thing—pan and all—in plastic wrap and add foil on top to ensure the bars don’t get freezer burn. This will hold up for about a month.

To freeze individual slices of your lemon bars: wrap in plastic wrap and put them in an airtight, freezer-safe container. This way, you can pop one out to thaw whenever you’re craving a slice!

To thaw your lemon bars, place them in the refrigerator overnight and cut them into slices if needed, making sure to eat them within two days.

Lemon cream cheese bars cut into squares.

More Cheesecake Bars

Looking for more cheesecake bars? Our sister site, Fit Foodie Finds has some incredible options, including:

Lemon cream cheese bar on a plate with whipped cream.
4.50 from 2 votes

Lemon Cream Cheese Bars

These easy lemon cream cheese bars have a creamy cheesecake filling that sits between a buttery crescent roll dough layer, making for a refreshing and sweet dessert.
Prep: 2 hours 15 minutes
Cook: 27 minutes
Total: 2 hours 42 minutes
Servings: 12
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Ingredients 

  • 2 8 oz. crescent roll tubes
  • 16 oz. cream cheese, softened
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • ½ cup granulated sugar, divided
  • 2 large lemons, zest, and juice (~⅔ cup juice and 2-3 tablespoons zest)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

Instructions 

  • Preheat the oven to 350℉.
  • Grease a 9×13-inch casserole dish with 1 tablespoon of butter.
  • Open one tube of crescent rolls and cover the bottom of the casserole dish with the flattened dough. Use your fingers to crimp together the seams that are in the dough. Set aside.
    a square baking dish filled with dough.
  • Place the cream cheese, powdered sugar, ¼ cup sugar, zest, lemon juice, and vanilla into a large bowl. Using a hand mixer, mix until well combined.
    a white bowl with a yellow batter in it.
  • Transfer the cream cheese mixture onto the top of the crescent roll dough in the casserole dish and evenly spread it out.
    a white baking dish with a layer of icing.
  • Next, cover the cream cheese mixture with the second tube of crescent rolls. Lightly go over the seams pinching them together.
    a white baking dish with a piece of bread in it.
  • Melt the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter and brush it on top of the crescent roll dough. Sprinkle on the remaining ¼ cup of sugar.
    a white baking dish with a lemon cake in it.
  • Bake for 30 minutes.
  • Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before slicing and serving.
    a white baking dish with a pie in it.

Tips & Notes

  • This is a great recipe to make the night before.
  • When the bars come out of the oven they will be taller because the cream cheese is still warm and not settled. At this point, the cream cheese will be softer than the finished product. If they were to be cut at this point the cream cheese would squirt out. You can tell the bars are ready to be cut when the bottom of the pan is cold in the middle, and when there is little give when pushing on the top layer of crust.

Nutrition

Calories: 326 kcal, Carbohydrates: 32 g, Protein: 3 g, Fat: 22 g, Fiber: 1 g, Sugar: 22 g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

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About Emily Richter

Emily spent the first 10 years of her career in marketing and advertising roles and started side-hustling with our sister site, Fit Foodie Finds, in Fall of 2015. She joined the team full-time in the Spring of 2018. Em lives in Minneapolis with her husband and dog, and manages The Cheese Knees (and Fit Foodie Finds) business operations as well as all things sponsorships and brand collaborations.

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Nikki
Nikki
December 26, 2022 5:57 pm

5 stars
These are so light, flakey and lemon-yyy that you’ll want to snarf the entire pan, but you won’t because you like to share just like I do. Sharing is caring, and I took these to Christmas dinner as a little snack-a-roo for the extended fam and they were a huge hit! I did have to put up with my weird Uncle Anton telling his tapeworm joke, but it was worth it. The punchline is on the seventh day, when the tapeworm sticks his head out and says “hey, where’s my lemon bar?”, you grab him, and *that’s* how you get rid of a tapeworm! LOL. Love these bars! Make them, eat them, you will, too.