Strawberry Crunch Cheesecake
on Jul 13, 2020, Updated Oct 20, 2020
Strawberry Crunch Cheesecake is an easy, no-bake recipe. This delicious dessert will remind you of those tasty strawberry shortcake bars you had as a kid.
Strawberry Crunch Cheesecake
Our kiddos- even though many of them are in their late-teens- still run to the windows when they hear the jingle of the ice cream truck. Even my taste-buds perk up when I see them driving through our neighborhood and I ask one of the kids to grab me something if they run out to it. I always- always– ask them to grab me those delicious strawberry crunch bars they seem to stock.
The bars are good- great even- but lately I’ve been wanting something a bit more. You know how much we love our cheesecakes here on the blog, and I had to bring in my love of the strawberry crunch bars into the mix. The result? This fun dessert cheesecake that I’m certain you all with love!
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To make this cake, we used ideas from our No Bake Orange Creamsicle Cheesecake– we subbed orange out for strawberry and made other small changes. We also pulled the “crunch topping” from our Strawberry Crunch Bar Ice Cream Cake to add another layer of deliciousness to this fun dessert! On top of all that, we decided to make this a layered dessert to make this even more interesting.
The best part from all the tweaks we made? You could mix things up and come up with all sorts of different desserts! Take the original Creamsicle Cheesecake recipe and make a “vanilla crunch” topping instead. You could even make a Chocolate Crunch Cheesecake!
There are all sorts of fun things you could do to make this recipe your own! If you liked this dessert, our friend Chungah made some Strawberry Cheesecake Popsicles over on her site that I’m certain you’ll love too. With a few small tweaks, you might even be able to put our “crunch topping” on them and make a gourmet Crunch Bar!
I think we’ve made a really fun, crowd-pleasing dessert here. Everyone’s tried it and they all love it! I’m certain you will too!
Ingredients for our Crunch Cheesecake
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Sugar Cookies
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Sugar
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Melted Butter
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Cream Cheese
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Heavy Whipping Cream
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Strawberry Jell-O
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Vanilla Extract
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Powdered/Confectioner’s Sugar
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Strawberry Wafers – We found the Strawberry Creme Wafers used here over at our Walmart.
How to Make Strawberry Crunch Cake
First things first, you want to make your crust. We did this by blitzing some sugar cookies in a food processor until they were finely chopped.
From here, we added our melted butter into the food processor with the chopped cookies. Pulse until incorporated. This will give you your crust which you’ll press into the bottom of a well-greased springform pan. Make sure you press some of the crust up the sides as well!
Once that’s pressed in, you’ll pop that into the freezer for half an hour. While it’s chilling, you can start on the cheesecake filling. This is as easy as beating together your cream cheese and sugar. Let your stand mixer do all the work or you can use a hand-mixer.
Here, you’ll want to start on the Jell-O filling. Simple enough: mix the gelatin with 1 cup of boiling water. We’ll mix this with our whipped topping in a little bit. Right now, it’s a bit too hot to do that.
Set that aside to cool and get started on your whipped cream. For this, put your whipping cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla together in a bowl. Using your mixer of choice, mix to stiff peaks.
This whipped cream is getting split between our gelatin and our cheesecake filling. Once the Jell-O from earlier has cooled off enough, you’ll add half of your whipped cream to it. Whisk these together and set aside.
The other half goes into our cheesecake filling. Toss the other half of the whipped cream into the cream cheese and sugar mix from earlier. Here, you’ll fold the two together.
That’s it for the inside of our cheesecake! All that’s left is to put it all together. To make this a layered dessert, you’ll have to ration out your fillings. Start with a layer of the cheesecake filling- the white stuff. It’ll fill in the little well you made when you put the crust mixture up the sides of the pan.
After that, you’ll add a layer of your strawberry filling on top of that. Try to keep your layers smooth so your end product looks nice!
You’ll top that layer with another layer of the cheesecake filling- using the rest of your cheesecake filling. On top of that will be the rest of your strawberry filling. We got 4 layers in total, but with careful measuring, you could make as many layers as you like!
That’s it for the cheesecake filling! All that’s left is making the “crunch topping.” This is as easy as blitzing together some sugar cookies and some strawberry wafers in a food processor. It’ll be about an equal amount of sugar cookies and wafers.
Add your “crunch topping” on top of your cheesecake and then put it in the fridge. You’ll want to let this chill for a about 6 hours to make sure it sets. It’ll be a bit of a long wait, but let me tell you it’s going to be worth it! Also, consider freezing the no-bake cheesecake to speed up the process. I always freeze mine to get nice even cuts.
Strawberry Crunch Cheesecake
Ingredients
- 16 oz Sugar Cookies, divided
- 3/4 cup Sugar
- 6 tbsp melted Butter
- 16 oz Cream Cheese softened
- 16 oz Heavy Cream
- 1 3.3 oz box Strawberry Gelatin
- 1 cup boiling Water
- 1/4 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1/2 cup Powdered Sugar
- 4 oz Strawberry Creme Wafer Cookies
Instructions
- Put 12 ounces of sugar cookies in food processor and pulse until fine.
- Add melted butter and pulse to incorporate.
- Grease bottom and sides of 9" spring form pan.
- Press mixture into bottom and slightly up sides of pan.
- Place in freezer for 30 minutes.
- In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, combine gelatin and boiling water. Whisk until dissolved.
- Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whip heavy cream, powdered sugar and vanilla until stiff peaks form.
- Add 1/2 of whipped cream mixture to cooled gelatin. Whisk to blend. Set aside.
- Fold remainder of whipped cream mixture into cream cheese mixture.
- Spread 1/2 cream cheese mixture over crust.
- Pour 2 cups of strawberry whipped cream mixture over cream cheese mixture.
- Chill in freezer for 15 minutes.
- Gently spread remaining cream cheese mixture over strawberry mixture.
- Pour remaining strawberry whipped cream mixture over cream cheese mixture.
- Add remaining 4 ounces of sugar cookies and 4 ounces of strawberry wafer to food processor and pulse until coursely chopped.
- Sprinkle chopped cookies over top of dessert.
- Refrigerate for at least 6 hours or freeze for 1 hour.
Nutrition
Huge hit!!
This is amazing? Sooooo yummy! Everyone loved it!!
What type/brand did you use for the sugar cookie part?
I have made this several times and my family loves it! I always use Golden Oreos and scrape the cream out for the the bottom crust as well as the crumb on top. You could use any kind of vanilla cookie, Chessmen cookies by Pepperidge Farm, Vanilla wafers to name a couple others.
What type of cookie was used for the “sugar cookie”?
I see 3 questions here but no answers. Why have a comment section if you’re not going to answer questions? That’s really irritating.
If you freeze it will it turn into like an ice cream cake?
Is that 956 calories for one slice or the whole cheesecake?
Is the regular strawberry wafer cookies?