Baked Cheddar Olives
The Gourmet Cookbook Copyright 2004
1 cup coarsely grated sharp Cheddar (about 4 ounces)
½ cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
20 small pimiento-stuffed green olives (from a 3-ounce jar), drained and patted dry
Put a rack in the middle of oven and preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Stir together cheese, flour, and cayenne in a bowl. Blend in butter with your fingertips until a dough forms. I had to add water for this to become a 'dough'.
Drop tablespoons of dough onto a sheet of wax paper and place 1 olive on each piece of dough. Lightly flour your hands and wrap dough around olives, enclosing each one completely. I just grabbed some dough and wrapped it around an olive, a tablespoon is probably too much, IMO. Transfer olives to a baking sheet with sides and bake until pastry is golden, about 15 minutes. Serve warm.
Cook’s Note: The dough-wrapped olives can be prepared up to 2 hours ahead and refrigerated on the baking sheet, covered with plastic wrap. Bring to room temperature before baking. I did refrigerate them for a couple of hours, and let them sit out a few minutes, but I didn't bring them back to room temp.
These were kind of a last minute decision for me. We like cheese. We like stuffed olives. It seemed like a nice, simple addition to the menu. I was satisfied with the end result and my husband and I finished them off pretty quickly. Even my two year old nibbled on one. I don't know if I would ever bother making these for a crowd, as I didn't think they were that 'special', to sit there and wrap olive after olive. But that's not to say they weren't very good, just not a showstopper.
1 comment:
I hate olives myself, but if you wrap the dough only partly around so that the end of the olive and pimento are showing, you can call them eyeballs and serve them at a Halloween party.
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