Cheese Balls

Cheese balls are, to me, a very holidayish food. I've never made one before, but this past week I had a few occasions for which I needed to make an appetizer and a dessert. I experimented with both a savory and a sweet version and both turned out very well if I do say so myself! I didn't take pictures of either of them, but thought I'd share the recipes in case you happen to be in need of some new ideas this season.

Tammy's Tempting Cheese Ball
1 (1 ounce) package dry ranch salad dressing mix
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup milk
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
12 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese
5 ounces roasted, salted almonds, chopped (I omitted)

If you want to see the actual directions, click on the link above. I didn't follow them. I am lazy, so I just threw everything into my food processor at once rather than mixing particular ingredients together and whatnot. It turned out nice and evenly mixed, so I'd recommend going that route if you have a food processor. This made quite a large batch, so I separated it into two balls and wrapped each in saran wrap. I made this the night before it was needed so the flavors had more time to blend and so the balls could set up properly. As noted, I did not roll the balls in chopped almonds. I do not like almonds, so I wasn't going to taint perfectly good cheese with some icky nuts. And I didn't miss them, nor did my friends who came over last night. We had the whole ball eaten in about 10 minutes flat. :-) I served these with Wheat Thins and Triscuits, but any cracker would do. Or even vegetable sticks I suppose, though I would never.

Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup finely chopped pecans (omitted)

Again, I just threw all the ingredients (except the chocolate chips) into my food processor to mix everything up. Then I just stirred the chocolate chips in by hand. As with the savory cheese ball, I spooned it onto plastic wrap, shaped it into a ball, and allowed to chill overnight. Mine was a little softer than I think it should have been, I think because when "softening" the butter in the microwave I got carried away and partially melted it. If I wasn't so lazy, I would have added a little more powdered sugar to firm it up, but I didn't care enough to bother. I did not roll my ball in pecans as the recipe suggests because, again, that would have ruined the recipe for me. I served this with those holiday cookies that Keebler comes out with this time of year - the gingerbread men and those Jingles cookies - but graham crackers, chocolate wafers, or whatever other kind of cookie you like would be just fine.

Dinner...

I love to cook. I really do. I just seem to never do it anymore. Well tonight I made one of my new favorite recipes and figured since this is the closest thing to cooking that I've done in a while, I'll share it! It's LOSTie Chatapalooza weekend which, for many of us, is a great excuse to chow down on junk food! So for my evening munching, I made this Buffalo Chicken Dip with a few variations.

First off, I don't use canned chicken. Both times I've made this, I've gotten Boars Head Buffalo Style chicken breast from the deli. I have them slice it pretty thick, about half an inch, and then just dice that up. It's quick and easy and adds extra buffalo flavor. Of couse, you could also bake or boil some chicken breasts yourself, but really, I can't be bothered with that most of the time. I also tend to go heavy on the hot sauce because I love it and lighter on the ranch dressing because I'm not crazy about it. Because I eat this with an inexcusable amount of Fritos Scoops, I try to lighten the dish by using Neufchatel (sp??) instead of cream cheese, light dressing, and low fat cheddar cheese.

Now, I ordinarily do NOT believe in going low fat when it comes to cheese. To me, low fat cheese usually = rubbery puke. But in this dip, there are so many other flavors going on that you don't even notice it. Plus, the full fat cheese tends to emit an oil when it's melted into the dip and let's face it, that just ain't pretty.

I meant to take a picture to add to this post, but I dug in too quickly. Oops! So the picture on Allrecipes.com will have to suffice. If you decide to give this dip a try, let me know how you like it!