Cupcake and Wine Party, Round 2

Obviously (or not so obviously, depending on your love of cupcakes and wine), we needed to have some food at the party besides cupcakes. Since we were serving wine and mini-cupcakes, we decided that we would have two themes when picking out the food: 1) it would all feature cheese, and 2) where possible, it would be as tiny as the cupcakes.

First, the boy made some cheesy meatballs. While they were delicious, as usual, this was a cobbled-together recipe (as usual) so I'm afraid I won't be able to share its tasty secrets with you.

To provide a semblance of health, I made sure to make a vegetable: brie-stuffed mushrooms. This little beauties are easy, fast, and involve two things I love: cheese and white wine. Unfortunately, they don't reheat in the microwave very well, and only served to reinforce my feelings on mushrooms. Specifically: "eh". Don't get me wrong, mushrooms have their place, I'm just not crazy about the texture of a cooked mushroom. For those out there who love their mushrooms squishy, this recipe would be perfect -- nice flavor, easy, and elegant.

Ease: 9
Taste: 6.5
Comfort: 6

In a further effort to round out our food groups, I whipped up miniature Gorgonzola cornbread muffins. Unfortunately, I can't find the recipe I used, but don't worry -- I wouldn't recommend checking it out anyway. While these were also adorable, I found them a little dry and crumbly -- plus the cheese just did not pop as much as I would have liked. If I made something like this again, I would probably stick to a cornbread mix and just toss a whole lot of cheese into it to give it extra life. These were fine, but probably not worth the extra effort -- even though it wasn't that much extra effort!

Ease: 8
Taste: 6
Comfort: 6.5

Of course, there had to be a winning food for the evening -- and the winning dish was the savory Gorgonzola cheesecake with pear compote. For the pear compote, I just used vanilla extract/vanilla sugar because I rarely break out the vanilla beans. I also switched out about 1/3 of the Gorgonzola for another hard cheese I had on hand. Wow, these were amazing! They were tangy, salty, and savory, and the pear compote added a delicate sweetness. These were gone that night -- totally addictive.

Ease: 8
Taste: 9.5
Comfort: 7.5

We also featured a few things we didn't make ourselves, like cheese and wine-soaked salami. All said, it was a magnificent -- and magnificently tasty! -- evening with wonderful friends.