Olive Cheese Balls: Impossible to Resist
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Want to impress your party guests? These olive cheese balls are a wonderful addition to any hors d’oeuvre table. They’re also super easy to make in under an hour with just five ingredients. Your guests will be impressed and want more after they’re gone.
One of our go-to party recipes, olive cheese balls, is one that we easily make with just a handful of pantry ingredients. These cheesy olive balls are practically impossible to resist thanks to the pastry cheese wrapping that provides a beautiful, slightly tangy, crunchy complement to salty pimento olives nestled inside each ball.
It’s a well-tested recipe that we originally found in the yellow Gourmet Cookbook. Ruth Reichl, the defunct magazine’s long-time editor who’s known to have a passion for both old and new recipes, edited the cookbook and called this recipe a “[standby] of 1950 bridge club hostesses.” While we can’t say that everything cooked during that decade (hello savory jello molds!) was great, this recipe for cheese balls with olives totally works.
It’s also a great recipe for dough novices out there (you know who you are) since its cheese/butter pastry dough is super forgiving. The keys are to let the butter soften for about 20 to 30 minutes and to work in a relatively cool place so that the dough doesn’t easily break. In other words, you don’t have to be a pastry chef to make these cheesy olive balls.
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Ingredients
This recipe requires the following five ingredients:
Ingredient quantities are detailed in the printable recipe card below.
How To Make Olive Cheese Balls
Making this recipe is so easy! All you need is a mixing bowl, a piece of parchment paper, a baking sheet and (most important) your hands. You can even prepare the olive cheese balls a couple of hours ahead of a party, place them in the refrigerator and bake them when your company arrives.
When you’re ready, start by mixing the cheese, flour and cayenne pepper in a medium mixing bowl until the ingredients are fully incorporated. While you’re doing this, preheat your oven to 400°F/205°C.
Add the softened butter to the bowl. Using your fingertips, gently press the butter until it’s also evenly incorporated.
Keep pressing the ingredients with your fingers. After about five minutes, a dough should form. If not, keep pressing. Just when you think that the dough will never form, it will happen.
Once you form the dough, you could be unscientific and break off random pieces to wrap around each olive, using your eyes as a measuring tool. However, the better option is to weigh the dough using a kitchen scale. You’ll then divide the weight of the dough by the number of olives (in this case 20) before creating individual dough balls accordingly.
Weighing the individual balls may sound like an extra step; however, based on our experience, it actually saves time.
Place the 20 dough balls on a sheet of parchment paper that’s atop a baking sheet. Flatten the balls with your palm and then wrap each around an olive.
After all of the olives are wrapped and formed into balls, bake the balls in your pre-heated oven for 15 minutes or until they’re golden brown.
Serve the olives on a round plate and eat them while they’re hot.
Olive Cheese Balls
Ingredients
- 1 cup sharp cheddar cheese (grated)
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (ground)
- 2 tablespoons butter (softened)
- 20 small pimento-stuffed green olives (drained and patted dry)
Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F/205°C.
- Mix grated cheese, flour and cayenne pepper in a mixing bowl.
- Add softened butter. Using your fingertips, press the ingredients against the bottom of the bowl to create the dough.
- Separate the dough into 20 balls and place the balls onto a baking pan covered with a sheet of parchment paper.
- Use your palm to press each ball flat. Place an olive on top of each flattened ball and then wrap the dough so that each olive is completely inside a dough ball.
- Bake for 15 minutes or until the balls are golden brown.
- Serve hot out of the oven.
Notes
- You can prepare the olive cheese balls up to two hours before baking them.
- You can freeze the baked olive cheese balls but be sure to wrap them in foil first. To reheat them, keep them wrapped in foil and bake at 350°F/180°D for about 15 minutes. Remove them from the foil immediately after taking them out of the oven.
Nutrition
💡 Frequently Asked Questions
A retro party appetizer that dates back to the 1950s, olive cheese balls are baked cheddar cheese balls with pimento-stuffed green olives inside.
Pimento-Stuffed Green Olives, Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese, Softened Butter, All-Purpose Flour and Cayenne Pepper.
You can prepare the olive cheese balls up to two hours before you bake them. Once they’re baked, you can wrap the olive cheese balls in aluminum foil and freeze them. You can then warm them up them, in the foil, for 15 minutes in your oven at 350°f / 180°c. (Remove them from the foil immediately after you take them out of the oven.)
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