.shot o' cheesecake.

hosting a petite brunch for a few friends sounds simple enough and that's why i decided to do it. two of my florida gals were on their way up and several of my memphis gals were looking forward to mingling with them. so, i put on my apron and my party planning hat and got to work. while thinking of what would satisfy our collective sweet tooth, i came across a recipe from half baked which you can find by scrolling to the bottom.

i'm not sure if you noticed, but there's a whole bunch of cream cheese in cheesecake shots. that makes sense, right? with a little added sweetness in the form of vanilla, sugar and cool whip, the cheesecake filling itself really takes plain ol' cream cheese into something worthy of the name 'cake.'

in order to mock the crust of an actual cheesecake, i needed crushed up graham crackers. you may be thinking to yourself that throwing some graham crackers in a plastic bag and smashing them to pieces sounds like a piece of (cheese)cake. if you indeed thought that, you were indeed wrong. before i come across as judgmental, please know i thought the same thing before i actually started trying to make these crumbs.

my original strategy was to consider the cracker-smashing with my fist a great exercise in stress relief. i pictured the innocent grahams as my current frustrations and went to pounding away. after about two point five minutes, my focused frustrations did actually dissipate but were quickly replaced by how un-fun crushing crackers turned out to be. ah, newer frustrations.

once my two parts cake and crust were all ready to be eaten, i had to cute them up.

i loaded the cheese cake goodness into a piping bag and piped it into a shot glass about half way up.

then, i added the crust portion and finished off by filling the remainder of the glass with cheesecake piped in. to top it off, i added a raspberry to each.

these dessert shooters are fun for parties. (and fun for sitting on the sofa days after the party double fisting them too.)

cheesecake shots
ingredients:
– 4 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
– 1/3 cup + 1T sugar
– 1/2 tsp. vanilla
– 1 tub (8 oz.) Cool Whip, thawed
– 8 – 10 graham crackers
– Fresh Berries
– Finely crush graham crackers
directions:
Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until smooth. Gently stir in cool whip until well blended.
Fill individual glasses half way with cream cheese mixture, either using a spoon or a piping bag fitted with a large round tip for a more polished presentation. Top with 1 tsp graham cracker crumbs. Shake glass to level crumbs. Fill to the top with more of the cream cheese mixture. Lightly sprinkle with additional graham cracker crumbs and top with berries.
Refrigerate 4 hours or until firm. Serve chilled. Makes roughly 16 mini servings, depending on the size of your shot glass.