Spooky Spider and Fly Eyes Cheese Ball

We’re excited to get to share a fun and delicious recipe with you today that showcases some of the fun things that you can do with California Ripe Black Olives.  I bet if you go look in your pantry right now, you have a can of black olives. Why, because everyone stocks these because you can use them for pretty much anything: salads, pasta, appetizer(I haven’t found a dessert yet, but I’m sure someone has!). If you have young kids, you have California Ripe Black Olives because they’re the perfect finger food. They’re easy to eat, and they’re not messy! My kids all love them!

For this post, we were challenged to use California Ripe Black Olives to make a piece of food art. When we received the challenge, we knew we had to do something Halloween inspired. Here is the great thing about this recipe, if you’re bringing it to a adult pot luck, you can make the giant spider, but if you want to do a fun after school snack for the kids, you can do the fly eyes on the frog brains.

The individual cheese balls work perfectly for little hands that you don’t necessarily want poking around an appetizer that other people are going to be eating!

I served this to my kids as their after school snack, and they devoured it! After they went through all the crackers, they started using tortilla chips! Don’t forget that this also works really well with veggies! The Fly Eyes are also a great snack that the kids can help make. They can create their own creepy bugs!

Kids would love this creepy snack any time of year, but if you have a Halloween party coming up this week, you’re definitely going to want to show off your creation! What are your favorite go to recipes using black olives?

 

Ingredients:

• 8 oz .Cream cheese
• 4 oz. spreadable herb cheese
• 1 c. shredded mozzarella
• 1 T. Worcestershire
• 1 T. garlic seasoning
• 1 T. juice from the can of California Black Ripe Olives
• 1 can California Black Olives

Instructions:

1. Combine first 6 ingredients and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Chill in the refrigerator.
2. If you want to make the large spider cheese ball, dice all but two of the Black Olives. If you want to make the creepy fly eyes, slice the olives in half.
3. For the spider, form the chilled cheese mixture into one large ball, and place on a serving dish that has enough room for the spider legs. Cover the cheese ball with the  diced Black Olives.
4. Using pipe cleaners, or straws, make eight spider legs and place them in the cheese ball.
5. For the eyes, stuff the two whole olives with something red (diced tomato, pimento, red pepper, etc…), and place them red side out on top of the cheese ball.
6. For the Creepy Fly Eyes, use a tablespoon to form the chilled cheese into small balls, and cover with two halves of a black olive. You can dice up a couple o the olives to make antennae, or teeth, or whatever creepy thing you can come up with!

 

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.