Nutty Cranberry Cheese Ball Bites

Need a quick nibbly to take along to an informal cocktail party? You can whip these up in almost no time.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
1  1/4 cups cream cheese
2 tbsps maple syrup
1/2 cup finely shredded mozzarella
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cumin

About 1/3 cup each chopped chives, dried cranberries and more chopped nuts or nutty seedy granola

Combine the 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, cream cheese, maple syrup, mozzarella, cinnamon and cumin. Using a small ice cream scoop, 1" size, scoop into balls and chill.

Once chilled roll each ball in the chives, dried cranberries and nuts.

Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Makes 33 - 1" bite-size cheese balls.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Cookies

This is a light, cakey cookie with the sweet taste of berries in every bite.

1/4 cup cream cheese, plain or berry (berry is better)
1/4 cup butter
2 tbsps white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup raspberries, quartered if large

Have both the cream cheese and butter at room temperature and beat with both sugars.

Add egg and vanilla.

Mix together the flour, soda and salt then add it, half at a time, to the wet ingredients.

Fold in the raspberries.

Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto silicone or parchment lined baking sheet.

Next I put the baking sheet in the freezer for 5 or 10 minutes so the cookies could set as it is a soft dough. I didn't want to wait by refrigerating the dough for an hour. It worked and I saved time so I'm happy : )

Bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes

Makes 18 cookies

The Best and Easiest Pound Cake

This recipe makes 2 cherry pound cakes.

It may have originally come from Kraft, but I'm not sure. This is my original copy.

We always have this at Christmas time.You can leave out the cherries and have 2 beautiful plain pound cakes.  Or see my variation at the end of this recipe.

8 oz pkg cream cheese (250 g)
1  1/2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
1 tsp almond flavouring
4 eggs
2  1/4 cups flour
1  1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups maraschino cherries, drained and roughly chopped
    This turned out to be 1 - 375 ml jar of cherries.
    (don't use glazed cherries, I tried it once....yuck!)
1/2 cup ground almonds

In a mixer blend cream cheese, sugar, butter and almond flavouring.  Add eggs one at a time and beat.  Gradually add 2 cups of the flour and baking powder to the batter.

Mix remaining flour with chopped cherries and ground almonds.

Fold fruit mixture into batter.
Divide into two greased  9 X 5 loaf pans.
Bake in preheated 325F oven for 1 - 1  1/2 hours (closer to the 1  1/2 hrs) until toothpick comes out clean.

Variation:

This time I decided to make 1 cherry and 1 chocolate chip streusel pound cake.

Follow the above recipe until you have added the 2 cups flour and baking powder. Next, mix in the ground almonds.
Divide the batter in half. Take 2  1/2 cups for each loaf.

For 1 cherry loaf:


Use 1 cup of cherries when making one loaf and toss together with 2 tbsps of flour.

Fold this into the 2  1/2 cups of batter. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Set aside.

For chocolate chip streusel loaf:

Mix together -

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup melted butter
1 cup dark chocolate chips

and set aside.

Take another 1/2 cup of chocolate chips and toss with 2 tbsps of flour.  Fold this into the other 2  1/2 cups of batter.

Spread half the batter in a greased loaf pan.  Layer the streusel mix over the batter and press lightly.  Top with remaining batter. It's a little tricky to spread the batter over the streusel, work slowly.

Bake these two loaves as per directions above. (The chocolate one will need the full 1 1/2 hours for sure)

Cool at least 15 minutes before removing from pans to cool completely on rack before slicing.

The original cherry loaf is supposed to have 200 calories for a 1  1/2 inch slice.

The chocolate one must be higher.

I usually cut the loaves in half and freeze, defrosting only what you need to serve.  One year I even sliced it then froze it.  That was a pretty good idea if I do say so myself!

Brunch "Pizza"

You can whip this up in no time.

Take 1 can crescent rolls.  Patch and press onto a 12 inch pizza pan.

Shred 1-2 apples and scatter over the crust. Sprinkle cinnamon.

 Now mix together 1 - 8 oz container of cream cheese, 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp vanilla.  And spread (carefully) over top of shredded apples.

Bake at 350 F for 15-20 minutes and top with fresh fruit.
This happened to be game day : )