Last night was such a fun night! My friends and I celebrated the birthdays of 3 of our very good friends. There are 8 of us that celebrate our birthdays together throughout the year and 3 of the ladies have birthdays in April … Azita, Susan, and Marie. I love a night with great friends – especially a night where the conversation and laughter flow effortlessly. That’s the kind of nights we all have when we’re together. The memories we are making together will be remembered as we get older and cherished forever.

For an appetizer, I wanted to make a version of something my friend and neighbor, Laura, made for bookclub once. She put out a platter of endive leaves with a dollop of blue cheese in each leaf. It was fabulous! I needed to change it a little, however, because there are a couple of my friends that really don’t care for blue cheese. I decided I’d make this with goat cheese instead. I also added spicy sweet pecans for crunch and a little honey for sweetness to balance out the spiciness of the pecans.

My friend, Pam, came over a couple hours before the rest of the guests so we could set up and prepare food together. We had a blast getting things started. One of them was this appetizer that we put together.

My daughter, Kylie, bought me a beautiful Waterford cake plate for Christmas. I love the small size of this particular cake plate. It’s a cake plate I can use for smaller desserts, and as I found out last night, appetizers. I really wanted to use this cake plate for the party last night and decided I’d use it for the endive leaves. As Pam was placing the leaves onto the plate, we knew we’d need to “stack” them. As we were placing everything on the plate, we noticed how it looked like a flower. The appetizer was beautiful as well as wonderful tasting. All the ladies mentioned that it looked like a flower also! They thought it was so pretty and so good.

Pam drizzling honey lightly over the cheese and nuts

This is one of the easiest, yet prettiest, appetizers to make for a gathering. It calls for only a few ingredients and didn’t take much time at all.

We placed a small (4 ounce) log of goat cheese into a bowl and mashed it together with a fork. In a small ziplock bag, we smashed the spicy sweet pecans with a large wooden spoon. We placed a dollop of goat cheese in each endive leaf and sprinkled crumbled nuts, finishing it with a drizzle of honey.

Another wonderful thing about this appetizer is how light it is. Everyone can enjoy this.

Ingredients

4 ounce log of goat cheese

1 package endive leaves

Sweet and Spicy Pecans

drizzle of honey

Directions

1. Separate endive leaves from stalk. You probably won’t use the small ones. Wash them and dry gently with a paper towel.
2. Mash goat cheese in a bowl.
3. Break nuts into smaller pieces.
4. Add a dollop of cheese and a sprinkling of nuts to endive leaves. Place on a platter as you go.
5. Drizzle honey over the cheese and nuts.

Enjoy!

Until next time, Kris