Festive Cheese Ball with Nuts and Cranberries

 I recently came across the concept of cheese balls or 'cheese bombs' which are typically served over Christmas in America; they consist of soft cheese and other ingredients shaped into a ball. I thought it would be fun to make one, but it did turn out a lot softer than I expected so I'm not sure if I did something wrong. It was tasty, anyway!

I used this recipe on the Tesco website.

You need:

300g soft cheese

2 cups mature Cheddar, grated

2 tbsp red onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp mango chutney

1 tbsp crushed garlic

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup chopped nuts

Mix the soft cheese, Cheddar and red onion in a bowl.

Add the mango chutney, garlic and Worcestershire sauce.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In another bowl, mix the chopped nuts and cranberries.

At this point you are supposed to be able to form the cheese mixture into a ball, and roll it in the nuts, but I found it far too wet and sticky. Instead I mixed the nuts and cranberries into the cheese mixture, which made it a little less sticky and a bit easier to form into a ball, but it was still extremely soft.

I wrapped it in two layers of clingfilm.

Finally I wrapped it in greaseproof paper and twisted the top - I got two of these out of this quantity of ingredients. It didn't turn out quite as I expected and isn't really something you could give as a gift but it would make a nice starter or addition to the buffet on either Boxing Day or New Year's Eve. You can spread it on crackers or eat with bread sticks.

I am sending this to Feel Good Food, a monthly blogging challenge hosted by Victoria at A Kick at the Pantry Door and guest hosted this month by JibberJabber.The ingredient she has chosen is cranberries.

I am also sharing this with Cheese Please, hosted by Fromage Homage, as the challenge is to make a festive cheese snack.