The Peplaus

Our friend Derek loves cream cheese; I mean, he *really* loves it, or at least he used to ... before we presented he and his lovely bride, Petra, with the cheese ball challenge. Derek tells us: "Upon initial examination, the recipe seemed simple enough. Only a few ingredients, and some of those are to be disregarded to make the Christmas version. Upon closer examination, however, there was more to this one than met the eye.

For starters, if we use the knife and the cheese-its for scale, there is no possible way that following the portions (e.g. 8 oz of cream cheese) will yield a ball the size of the one in the picture. Instead you'd end up with something roughly the size of a tennis ball. I conservatively estimated that to produce an end result roughly the same size as the balls in the beauty shot, it would require the portions listed to be increased at least six, maybe eight-fold.



It was time to go big or go home, so the photos I present to you here are the result of an OCTUPLING of the recipe.

The resulting mass of artery-clogging goodness you see before you is roughly the size of one hemisphere of a standard bowling ball! I felt the example lacked a certain holiday flair, so maraschino cherries and a gumdrop Christmas wreath were added to the end product replacing some of the pimientos and throwing the cocktail onions and olives into sharp relief. The staging pieces were unearthed this weekend in my Grandmother's attic and are of the period."



According to Derek (and we are inclined to agree!) "The look of abject horror on the face of the Santa candle pretty much says it all about this dish."



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Merry Christmas!

I hope that cheese ball tastes as good as it looks!

--L&S