If you have a crowd to cook for on Thanksgiving, an easy buffet dessert can help keep your time in the kitchen to a manageable couple of hours. These cheesecake bars can be made a day in advance, and they are small enough to make guests feel that they are indulging, but not overdoing it.

This was my Auntie Annie’s recipe, which she called Cheese Freeze. (I thought it should be renamed, since there’s nothing in it that‘s frozen.) She was a good-hearted farmwife who was constantly in motion and seemed quite happy about it. I don’t think she ever owned a clothes dryer, and her washer was one of those old-fashioned conventional things with rubber rollers for squeezing water out of the clothes. I liked to play tag around the sheets hanging on her line, and she was too kind to scold me about it. She always had some freshly-baked snack in her kitchen, and my brother and I would fly in, grab a little pastry, and hurtle back outside, slamming the screen door on the way out.

Auntie Annie kept her own big garden, and worked on my grandmother’s farm, canning and pickling whatever there was to can and pickle, as well as doing great mounds of ironing while watching her favorite soap operas. Her one indulgence was her tulip garden; she used to buy a single exotic bulb at a time and add it lovingly to her collection. It was an education in Holland’s finest to see her spring tulips, but now I realize it was also a useful lesson in how one’s life could be full and productive and satisfying with the simplest of things. As the Dalai Lama says, “It’s better to want what you have, than to have what you want.”

She was rightfully proud of this recipe, and I hope you’ll enjoy it also.

Cheesecake Bars

Serves: 6
Prep time: 20 minutes plus 3 hours to refrigerate
For crust: