Christmas Party Cheese Balls

Perfect for parties, large family gatherings, or even late night Christmas movie watching – cheese balls are classic, comforting, happy holiday food! In case you can’t tell, we love our cheese. Cheese balls require minimum cooking skills, but look and taste as amazing as if a chef had made them. As long as you have an electric mixer, you pretty much just have to mix them up and refrigerate them. The best way to serve a cheese ball is on a decorative platter surrounded by chunky slices of dip-able veggies like celery, red and green bell pepper, carrots, radishes, and cucumber for pretty colors and yummy nutrition.

Ingredients:

• 16 oz. Organic Valley Cream Cheese
• 8 oz.  Minerva’s Organic Grass-fed Colby Cheese
• 1/2 tsp. Annie’s Organic Mustard
• 1 tsp. Coconut Secret or Bragg’s Aminos
• 1/4 tsp. Black Pepper
• 1/4 tsp. Paprika
• 1/2 tsp. Parsley Flakes
• 1 cup Finely Chopped Organic Pecans

Directions:

1. Set the cream cheese out and let it reach room temperature. Dice the pecans by hand or in a blender or food processer and shred the Colby with the small holes on the grater, not the big ones. We’re trying to get a smooth, creamy texture, and chunky cheese pieces won’t make that happen.
2. Set the pecans aside in a wide, shallow baking dish.
3. Place the cream cheese, shredded Colby, mustard, aminos, paprika, parsley, and pepper in a bowl and beat until fully blended with an electric mixer. Mix in 1/4 cup of the chopped pecans. Cover this mixture tightly, and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours or you can leave it in the fridge overnight and finish preparing the cheese ball later.
4. At least an hour before you plan to serve it, take out the cheese mixture, half it, and form each half into a ball. Roll each cheese ball in the chopped pecans with one hand while gently pressing the nuts onto the cheese with the other hand as you go to make sure the nuts stick and lay on the outside of the ball evenly.
5. Now you can wrap up the cheese balls and refrigerate them for at least 30 minutes before serving them. As long as they are tightly wrapped, you should be fine leaving a fully finished cheese ball in the fridge overnight if you want to prepare ahead of time for a big dinner party.

 

Adapted from http://www.yummly.com/recipe/external/Cheese-Ball-Martha-Stewart

23 Dec This entry was published on December 23, 2014 at 10:47 pm. It’s filed under Indulge, Recipes and tagged Food, Grass-fed, Holidays, Indulge, Organic, Recipes. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.