One day last week, Doug mentioned that he'd seen a penguin shaped appetizer that he thought I'd like. He'd seen it in his Facebook feed as one of his friends had liked or commented on it. Or shared it. Anyway! I had him get online and scroll through his Facebook feed until he found the photo, and I was instantly smitten. I thought these were the cutest things I'd seen in a long time!
~ olives, carrots and cream cheese ~
The photo originated on Facebook via one of those pages that posts photos without linking to their original source, so I thought a Google search for "olive penguins" would lead me to the creator of these cute little guys. Nope. Instead there were a whole bunch of links to various blogs - none of them claiming to be the clever person that thought this up. {And because I recently learned that one of my photos was shared on a Facebook craft page that doesn't link back, I've added that annoying watermark to the photos in today's post.}
I just followed the photo and did these myself, but here are a couple of tips that might make your first try a bit easier:
♥ The cream cheese needs to be super cold. I rolled these little balls while the cream cheese was still cold, and they softened up by the time I got to those final olives.
♥ Find jumbo black olives for the body, and small for the head. Cut the jumbos in half.
♥ Gently press the pieces of the jumbo olives around a ball of cream cheese. I pushed the backs together to close it up, leaving a little round tummy of cream cheese in the front.
♥ Keep a damp paper towel close by to wipe your fingers from time to time. I actually took a damp paper towel and wiped off some of the olives when I was done. Cream cheese fingerprints didn't look very appetizing.
♥ Take care with cutting the notch out of the carrot slice for the beak. You want it to be wide enough to hold when you place it in the olive hole. And I was surprised at how well these stayed together. I transported and served them without anything falling off/apart!
And if you are the clever person that came up with this idea, please do let me know! I will give you credit and I will sing your praises all over the internet! These were easy to put together and were a real hit with the family.
♥
18 comments:
Oh my! They are utterly adorable Deb :o)
OMG! Those little guys are absolutely adorable.
These are fabulous, Deb! No one but me eats olives in our family, so I doubt they'll see the light of day here, but they are so cute!
Adorable!
These are wonderful!
Those are super cute! And I bet children would love them.
Rinda
I love these - for so many reasons! I have to give them a try but that rolling up of the cream cheese must be so fiddly. I think I might have a go using those small mozarella pearls, or would they be too big?
For Debs14: I actually thought about using mozzarella cheese because I just think it would taste better. However, I think the cream cheese helps to hold them together, and I doubt that the mozzarella would have that sticky effect. The cream cheese was actually very easy to handle - just best to have it as cold as possible from the beginning. :o)
These are really cute!
I recently had someone use one of my photos on Pinterest but link back to a recipe on a different site
Oh, the cuteness....I can hardly stand it!!! So adorable.
So cute, almost enough to make me get over my dislike of olives...but they are darling enough for me to maybe make with my family who do like them.
I don't know what to say - they are quite incredible!
You could add salt and pepper and perhaps some sort of herbs to the cream cheese for flavour ... might ruin the effect with the colour though.
I so love these and have been racking my brains for something to prepare for a bring and share lunch at work - now I know! I may even have to sneak a few in for the Crop bring and share lunch on the 7th.
I read your last post and seriously cannot believe that a whole year has passed. It was a beautiful post.
SO sweet, I just love them Deb! You are very talented! :D x
They are so cute looking Deb! Sadly with neither of us liking olives they won't be seen here. I wonder if there's something we could use instead of olives. Hmmm.
These are so cute! I have Pinned from here to remember it and so it goes back to you. I much prefer that because otherwise I can't find how to do it!
Hi...I clicked over here from Pinterest to learn how you made the adorable penguins. Thanks for the info. I was so surprised to see Rex. I have had many box turtles living in my back yard for about 35 years. They are such neat little reptiles. I have never fed them raw hamburger or boiled eggs, but boy do they love Nine Lives Super Supper, strawberries and earth worms. My problem is keeping the cats away long enough for the turtles to eat the cat food :-) They are hibernating now, but I'll be sure to try the egg and meat when they come out this Spring.
I used mini boccini cheese and just put some cream cheese inside olives to stick them to cheese.
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