Last week WM texted me a recipe. It’s for No-Bake Margarita Cheesecake Bites via If You Give a Blonde a Kitchen. Which is a fantastic name for a recipe blog if you can commit to having the same hair color for more than a year. I cannot.
I tried it on Saturday, because is there a better way to mark the first summer without St. James of Buffett, the patron saint of booze in a blender than with a margarita themed treat? I think not. I’m not going to rehash the recipe here — go to If You Give a Blonde a Kitchen for that — but I made a few tweaks based on what I had.
The recipe calls for a 9×9 baking dish. I only had an 8×8, so I figured my bites would be taller than hers. And the recipe lists 10 sheets of graham crackers which is conveniently one sleeve of Honey Maid.
Derail: One of our daily snacks in kindergarten was graham crackers and munching on some graham crackers while the dessert was in the freezer was very nostalgic. I have one more sleeve left and I think I’m going to enjoy them as my nightly snack this week.
I didn’t feel like taking out my Ninja blender so I crushed them using the old plastic baggie, rolling pin, and “think of the ones who said I was overreacting in 2016” method.
When we were grocery shopping I could not remember if we had tequila here at home (we did) but I didn’t want to purchase a whole bottle. If you don’t want to go all out on liquor, buy one of the little minibar bottles that they have near the cash register where you purchase your booze. I only used 2 tablespoons, which left enough in this 50ml bottle for WM and I to each have a nip and realize once again that we don’t like straight shots of tequila.
The recipe calls for extra salt on top before serving, but I skipped that because WM isn’t a fan of salty sweets. There was enough salt in the crust anyway to give that salty margarita kick. I skipped the vanilla because I was out of it and didn’t want to go back to the store. Nobody noticed.
Here is my finished product on an espresso saucer:
Mine are thinner than the recipe shows, which is odd because I used a smaller dish and didn’t scale it down. Maybe it’s because I used only 2 tablespoons of tequila instead of 4? Or I could have whipped them more in the mixer.
It doesn’t matter because they were FANTASTIC. All three of us loved it, and I can definitely see myself trying to substitute watered down lemon juice for tequila and taking it to barbecues. I can also see myself taking the base recipe and substituting different flavors.
And I’ve bookmarked that recipe site for the future!
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Recipe saved for future use!