Creamy & bright lemon ginger bars with Graham cracker crust

These cream lemon ginger bars are a refreshing take on classic American lemon bars. This version takes its creaminess and its Graham cracker crust from cheesecake. Adding ginger gives these bars a pop of freshness, and a touch of turmeric makes the yellow color pop. If you’ve only had turmeric in savory dishes before, no worries, it goes great in sweets, too!

Keys to delicious lemon ginger bars

• Good quality lemon juice: I highly recommend fresh lemon juice for this recipe since lemon juice is the star of the dessert. You need the zest anyways. With store-bought lemon juice, you may get a bitter flavor depending on the brand. Also choose untreated lemons if you want to avoid eating waxy zest.
• Don’t overbake: We want a creamy dessert here, not dry. The lemon ginger bars are done cooking when they have only a little jiggle left to them, but not totally firm. They’ll finish firming up as they cool, especially in the refrigerator.
• Fine crumbs: Be sure to grind your Graham crackers (or digestives) to fine crumbs. If too coarsely ground, the crumbs don’t form a nice crust that holds together.
• Cookies & cheese: The choice of cookies for the crust & cream cheese for the filling depends on what’s sold where you live. Keep reading below for suggestions in Europe vs America.

Alternatives to Graham crackers

A Graham cracker crust is by far the main type of crust for American cheesecake, and that’s what I’m using for these bars. The only problem for me is that living in France, there are no Graham crackers. While cheesecake has a certain popularity in France (and Europe), the graham crackers seem not to have made it out of the States.

No worries, a few alternatives are out there, though, if you live in Europe. For a British take, McVitie’s digestive biscuits are the closest alternative to graham crackers (and my favorite option). Like graham crackers, these use a coarse wheat flour and are relatively low in fat (comparing to an average cookie). A more French alternative is the “petit beurre” cookie. This is a classic butter cookie from Nantes with only a little more fat than graham crackers, but using classic white flour. The German Leibniz butterkeks are another option, very similar to the petit beurre.

Feel free to use whichever biscuit/cookie/cracker is available where you live!

Cream cheese in America versus Europe

Cream cheese is not the same between America and Europe. Standard American cream cheese is quite firm at 34% fat, whereas the European variety has a very spreadable texture at only about 18-21% fat depending on the brand (even the American brand Philadelphia). For more details, see the intro to my no-bake cheesecake recipe.

For this recipe, which I perfected using French cream cheese, you can substitute American full-fat cream cheese + milk or plain yogurt. The amounts are listed in the recipe below. If you do use American cream cheese, just be sure to really soften the cream cheese and add the milk a bit at a time, otherwise you have cheese clumps floating in milk.

You might also like…

For more creamy desserts, you can check out my European-style no-bake cheesecake and my Middle-Eastern-style orange blossom rice pudding!

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these lemon ginger bars!

Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Creamy Lemon Ginger Bars

A cross between lemon bars & cheesecake with a refreshing ginger twist

Prep Time15 minutes mins

Cook Time45 minutes mins

Chill time4 hours hrs

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: cream cheese, lemon

Servings: 12

Ingredients

Crust:

• 140 g McVitie’s digestives or Graham crackers
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 50 g (3 ½ tbsp) melted butter

Filling:

• 125 g European cream cheese or 75 g (2.6 oz) American full-fat cream cheese, very softened + 50 g (3 ½ tbsp) milk or yogurt
• 165 g (scant ¾ c) sugar
• 1.5 tbsp cornstarch
• ⅓ c lemon juice
• ½ tbsp lemon zest
• 3 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• ¾ tsp vanilla
• ¾ tsp turmeric
• ½ tbsp ginger paste (see note)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 150 °C (300 °F). Line an 8×8 inch (20×20 cm) pan with foil or parchment paper, leaving some overhang to pull out the bars later. Set aside.
• Make the crust: Blend the cookies in a food processor, then add the sugar and melted butter and pulse to combine evenly. Press the buttery crumbs evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool slightly.
• Increase the oven temperature to 180 °C (350 °F).
• Make the filling: With electric beaters, mix the cream cheese and sugar together in a large bowl until creamed and smooth. Mix in the other filling ingredients.
• Bake: Pour the filling over the baked crust and return to oven. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the center is no longer wobbly but not totally solidified. The bars will set up in the refrigerator.
• Chill: Once baked, set the pan on a cooling rack to cool for an hour, then refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.
• Once chilled and firmed up, pull the dessert out of the pan using the overhanging parchment paper. Cut into bars. The bars will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Notes

1. Use a mortar and pestle to mash up some fresh ginger into a pasty consistency. Grating the ginger could work, too. Alternatively, you can buy pre-made ginger paste or make a bigger batch in a blender.