The Cheese "Ball"

I made the Cheese Ball recipe from Better Homes & Gardens last night for a law school friend's birthday party. This cheese ball was, as Dave said, unlike any cheese ball we've ever had.

The ingredients were cream cheese, sour cream, butter, grated onion, and snipped parsley. (Incidentally, the recipe also called for two tablespoons of pimiento, and I just frankly wasn't able to regress quite THAT far into the seventies.)


After you mix the substance of the cheese ball, you're supposed to chill it, and then in theory I believe you're supposed to roll it in nuts and more snipped parsley. However, as you can see from the above picture, this cheese "ball" doesn't exactly stay together.

Was it the lack of pimientos that spelled my cheese ball's structural failure? Or was it that I didn't chill it for long enough?

We may never know, because I have three more cheese ball/log appetizers to make in this chapter, and chances are we'll like them better than this one. it was OK, and the party certainly ate it up quickly, but I like my cheese balls to be, well, ball-shaped. If you can believe it, the cheese ball was even flatter than this by the time we got to my friend's house downtown.


Also, I know it is called a "cheese" ball because of the cream cheese, but we were all a little unsure about a white and semi-runny cheese ball that didn't really taste that much like cheese. I guess Americans nowadays are more used to the cheddar cheese cheese balls that you can buy in the store.

Ultimate ruling: Definitely a new experience to create a cheese ball, but not sure if I would make this particular cheese ball again.

I did learn a new cooking technique, though, which is what this project is all about. The grated onion for the ball was actually a really good idea to get the onion flavor without the large crunchy chunks of onion. I think I would use that technique again. So, thanks, cheese ball.