BBQ Recap & Sweet Links

A couple of weekends ago, my fiancé and I hosted an end of summer BBQ. (I know, I'm very behind on posting.) This summer has gone by so fast and so much of our free time has been spent on wedding planning that we wanted to get in one last summer celebration before the seasons change.

It was also the last BBQ at my house which was somewhat bittersweet. But we did it right – great friends and great food made for a great night!

We provided the meat and fixings, refreshments and desserts. Oh did we have desserts...but more on that later!

We asked guests to bring a salad or side dish to share and we had an overflowing table of amazing and delicious dishes. We have some very talented friends and I definitely need to track down some of the recipes!

Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of everything, but some of the highlights were:

Broccoli, Almond and Grape Salad – It might sound odd, but it was wonderful
Cha Cha Chicken Canapes – These were all gone by the end of the night
Deviled Eggs – A classic; they were gone immediately
Fruit Salad – Very refreshing
Roasted Vegetables – Delicious; they balanced out the sweets, or so I like to tell myself
Homemade Baked Beans – Perfect for a BBQ
Baked Jalepeno Cheese Dip – This is one of my favorites.
Pioneer Woman’s Bacon Jalepeno Poppers – Of course!

I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the fabulous dishes, so my apologies, they were all great and there were just too many to keep track of.

Also, my fiancé did an excellent job at the grill!

To finish off the menu, we had a selection of desserts.

Everybody had their personal favorites; which is the whole point of offering a selection of desserts. Even some of the items that I wasn’t thrilled with found a fan in the crowd. Below is a list of the desserts (with links to the recipes) and my editorial thoughts.

Italian Cream Cake (from Pioneer Woman’s Friend) – I was very much looking forward to this and thought it would be my favorite. Sadly, however, I wasn’t as thrilled with it as I anticipated…it was really, really sweet; perhaps a tad too sweet. I used unsalted butter in the recipe (because I always use unsalted butter for baking) but I’m wondering if salted butter would have balanced out some of the sweetness…the recipe did not specify.

Better Than Crack Brownies (from How Sweet Treats) – This were a crowd favorite, they were delicious and not very hard to make at all. If you like peanut butter and chocolate, this is a must try.

Chewy Lime and Coconut Sugar Cookies (from Two Peas and their Pod) – These were my favorite! I love coconut and the hint of lime gave them the perfect fresh and tropical taste. Very good!

Brown Butter Pound Cake Ice Cream Petit Fours (from July Daring Bakers Challenge) – I liked how the pound cake turned out; I wasn’t thrilled with the dark chocolate glaze. These were definitely not my favorite, but they did find a few fans that loved the dark chocolate glaze.

Enjoy!

Picky Palate’s Shortbread Cookie Crusted Peanut Butter Mini Cheesecakes

Hello everyone, I apologize for my absence lately. The last couple of weeks have been very busy and this week was filled with a mid-week road trip and ended with my high school reunion. But I’m back now and I have a lot of good posts planned.

To get things started back up again, I’ll show you what I took to the high school reunion picnic today:

Picky Palate’s Shortbread Cookie Crusted Peanut Butter Mini Cheesecakes.

If you have not visited Picky Palate’s web site yet, you need to ASAP! She is so creative with her recipes. I have a growing list of her creations that I can't wait to try.

A few notes on this recipe:

I ended up with a lot more cheesecake batter than what would fit into the mini cheesecake pan, so I used self-standing cupcake liners to bake the rest of the batter…after all you can’t waste good cheesecake. I also needed to cook them longer than the time noted in the recipe, so just keep an eye on them because every oven is different.. I made them this morning before the picnic, next time I’ll make them the day before so they get more time in the fridge.

For the Shortbread Cookie Crusted Peanut Butter Mini Cheesecakes recipe, click here.

For Picky Palate’s home page, click here.