Cheese-Wrapped Olives (Bollitas)

[s'kat]

Cheese-Wrapped Olives (Bollitas)

Serves 7 as Appetizer.

These savory little appetizers are geared to please the olive-lover in the crowd. Can be frozen before baking. If doing so, place directly into oven from freezer and extend the baking time by just a few minutes. Recipe from a clipping, author unsourced.

• 1 c shredded sharp cheddar cheese
  
• 1 T unsalted butter, softened
  
• 1/4 tsp paprika or cayenne pepper
  
• 1/2 c flour
  
• 2 4 garlic-jalapeno stuffed olives (or pimento-stuffed green olives)
  

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In bowl of food processor, combine cheese, butter, paprika/cayenne, and flour. Process until smooth.

Take about 1 Tablespoon of crumbly dough and place in the palm of your hand. Place one of the olives in middle of dough. Cup your hand to begin fixing dough around olive.

Roll between palms of hands until dough is smoothly wrapped around olive. Sometimes the dough gets a little crumbly, rolling faster helps a bit, and you can stick dough onto any'naked' areas and roll until smooth. Repeat until all olives have been wrapped.

Place onto oiled baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.

Due to the amount of cheese in the batter, these will be rather greasy when they emerge from the oven. Remove from baking sheet and place between paper towels to remove excess grease.

Note: Upon making these recently, I discovered that the preferred method should be to freeze these on a baking tray for about 3-4 hours before baking. This allows the texture of the 'dough' to remain firm around the balls when baking. Of course if you don't have the time, they are still just as tasty the first way... the balls just don't hold up quite as well in the oven.

Keywords: Hors d'oeuvre, Appetizer, Easy

( RG309 )