Ladies Night 2012

Ladies Night. There is something therapeutic about sharing good food, tasty drinks, and sweet desserts with your closest girl friends. It's 72% better than a massage, 89.4% better than passive aggressively updating your Facebook status, and 99.9% better than making up arbitrary percentages.

The requirements for ladies night: the ladies, good food, and a good drink.

On this particular occasion, Jordan took point and let us tear up her house. To kick the night off, Jenni brought the drink ingredients: basil and lime muddled in gin and soda. I'm not a big gin fan, but this stuff was good enough to be declared the “official” drink of ladies night. For dinner, Jordan made an original recipe crock pot soup with chicken, veggies, mini tortellini, and cheese. It paired nicely with the crusty bread Hannah brought. For dessert, yours truly made mini cheesecakes with raspberry sauce. They're super easy and nom nommy!

Mini Cheesecakes with Raspberry Sauce

(Makes about 36 mini cheesecakes and ½ c. sauce)

Ingredients:

36ish mini Nilla Wafers

2 (8oz) blocks cream cheese (softened)

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

For Raspberry Sauce:

1 bag frozen unsweetened raspberries

1/3 c. sugar

1½ Tbsp. lemon juice

Special Tools:

Mini cupcake liners

Mini cupcake pans

Fine mesh sieve

Pre-heat oven to 325°

Line mini cupcake pans with mini cupcake liners.

Place 1 mini Nilla Wafer in each cup. In a medium bowl, mix cream cheese, vanilla, and sugar on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs and mix well. Spoon cream cheese mixture over wafers until each is about ¾ full. Bake 20-25 minutes or until center wiggles slightly when pan is shaken.

Remove cheesecakes from pan when cool and chill in the refrigerator.

Meanwhile, mash up frozen raspberries in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add sugar and lemon juice. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.

While still hot, carefully pour raspberry syrup through a mesh sieve into a stainless bowl. The liquid will drain immediately. Use a spatula to push as much pulp through the sieve as possible. I worked on mine for a good 20 minutes. That's just because I'm freakish and didn't want to lose ANY of that raspberry goodness! Stir juice and pulp until combined.

Pour into a squeeze bottle or cover bowl and refrigerate.

To serve: Squeeze or spoon raspberry sauce over cheesecake and prepare to be delighted!

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In my opinion, these mini desserts are best served the next day. It allows the raspberry sauce to mellow out a little and the cheesecakes to cool completely. The sauce recipe is truly limited to what kind of fruits you have. Just imagine: a mini cheesecake bar with various fruit sauces. Blueberry, strawberry, and cherry. It makes my taste buds sing just thinking about it!