Making this recipe is so easy! All you need is a mixing bowl, a piece of parchment paper, a baking sheet and (most important) your hands. You can even prepare the olive cheese balls a couple hours ahead of a party, place them in the refrigerator and bake them when your company arrives.
When you’re ready, start by mixing the cheese, flour and cayenne pepper in a medium mixing bowl until the ingredients are fully incorporated. While you’re doing this, preheat your oven to 400°f / 205°c.
Add the softened butter to the bowl. Using your fingertips, gently press the butter until it’s also evenly incorporated.
Keep pressing the ingredients with your fingers. After about five minutes, a dough should form. If not, keep pressing. Just when you think that the dough will never form, it will happen.
Once you form the dough, you could be unscientific and break off random pieces to wrap around each olive, using your eyes as a measuring tool. However, the better option is to weigh the dough using a kitchen scale. You’ll then divide the weight of the dough by the number of olives (in this case 20) before creating individual dough balls accordingly.
Weighing the individual balls may sound like an extra step; however, based on our experience, it actually saves time.
Place the 20 dough balls on a sheet of parchment paper that’s atop a baking sheet. Flatten the balls with your palm and then wrap each around an olive.
After all of the olives are wrapped and formed into balls, bake the balls in your pre-heated oven for 15 minutes or until they’re golden brown.
Serve the olives on a round plate and eat them while they’re hot.
