more party-time and FOOD! :)

Thursday night I had some good friends over for a fun party...I hosted a Thirty-One party at my house. I had met the consultant, Lindsay Hale, at a group home-party consultant party at The Lodge in Bloomington back in December and booked a party with her then. It was a ton of fun! I LOVE entertaining. In fact, my only lament with the house we own right now is that I would love to have a BIGGER place to be able to have more people over! I LOVE the cooking, even the cleaning, and just general preparation and excitement that goes into having a group of fun friends over. I love spending time with a group of fun people doing anything, really!

Naturally, the gluten-free diet has necessitated quite a few changes in my "entertaining" plans!! This was actually the biggest get-together I'd had, post gluten-free lifestyle change. The guests were: Sarah and Jami (fun Bloomington friends!), Katie Fanello (newly-engaged Augie friend; she is engaged to Jeremy's old college roommate. Katie is in grad school for SLP at ISU right now), Abbey (a newer Blo-no friend; she works with Jer), Dawn and Stacy (2 fun SLP girls that I work with at Easter Seals), and Pam (Dawn's sister from out of town who was visting). It was so much fun!! Lindsay was a really fun consultant, too, so it was nice to get to know her a bit more as well.

Enough babbling, on to the important stuff...the menu!! I made gluten free brownies (I used the Gluten Free pantry mix that I briefly mentioned previously; I made them for the first time when we were visiting Jeremy's parents' place in Raleigh), gluten-free mini-cheesecakes (a recipe I made up after compiling some ideas I found online), had some white corn tortilla chips with a dip I made, and some yummy buttery home-made popcorn (that Jami loves!! :)).

Here are the brownies (or half of them, anyway!) after most were eaten :). (another nerdy reason I love the entertain is I LOVE to use all of my fun Longaberger products!! :) Haha!!). I thought they were delicious, but Jeremy informed me that they weren't as good as the ones I had made before in NC. I informed him that the mix was identical, but he told me that I just "must have" done something differently. Honestly, I might have overbaked them a bit (oops!) because they weren't as gooey as the first batch. Oh well...I still thought they were great and would definitely recommend the Gluten Free Pantry brownie mix that I used to create them! A mix that makes an 8x8 pan (I combined two boxes and used a 9x13" pan) costs about $3.50 at Wal Mart...yeah substantially more than the $1 you can get many non-GF brownie mixes for! Frustrating!!


Gluten-free and Fabulous Mini-cheesecakes
3 8-oz bricks of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sour cream (I used Daisy brand light sour cream; it is GF)
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (make sure it is GF!)
Mi-Del brand Gluten Free ginger snaps (or may substitute any gluten-free cookies!)

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Line muffin tips with paper or aluminum baking cups (I used paper).
3. Place one cookie in the bottom of each baking cup.
4. In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract until smooth and creamy.
5. Fill baking cups approximately 3/4 full with cream cheese mixture (I used a cookie scoop for this; less mess and worked wonderfully!)
6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.
7. Cool completely before storing in a tightly covered container in your refridgerator.

SOOO easy...and sooo delicious!

NOT the best photos...but here are my little cheesecakes! I made half with chocolate chips sprinked on top, and half plain. They would also be fabulous with fruit sprinkled on top. One of the recipes online showed mini-cheesecakes baked with one madarin orange segment baked on top of it. That could be yummy as well. The possibilities are endless! Next time, I want to adapt the recipe to be pumpkin mini-cheesecakes, with some pumpkin puree baked in! Perhaps in place of the sour cream...we'll see.

terrible photo...but you get the idea...


These little delights were SO easy to make...and SO worth it! Yum-yum-yummy! The are the kind of things that don't taste "fake" or make you feel like you are still deprived from the "real thing"!