Ingredients:
1/2 cup Musselman’s apple butter
8 oz (brick) cream cheese, at room temperature
8 oz mascarpone, at room temperature
1/3 cup confectioners sugar
1 cup sliced almonds

Directions:
In a large bowl, beat together the apple butter, cream cheese, marscapone and sugar until smooth with the paddle attachment of an electric mixer. Scrape into a bowl and refrigerate 1-2 hours or until well chilled.

Place the almonds in a shallow bowl. Set aside. Remove the apple butter mixture from the container and mold into a ball. Roll in almonds to coat. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve with apples, pears and graham crackers.

Prep time: about 10 minutes, serves about 20

My thoughts:

Our friends have an annual holiday party that that is always a lot of fun. This year they asked for people to bring an exciting dish to share and I knew it was my chance to make the sweet, dessert cheese ball I’ve been waiting to make for at least the last 8 months. Being a family of two, our needs for a cheese ball are pretty small on the day-to-day so I’d been looking for an excuse to make it. Since I am a Musselman’s apple butter blogger, an apple butter-spiked cheese ball seemed like a no brainer. It was super quick to put together and transport. I just placed it in the middle of a platter, loosely wrapped it in foil and then added the fruit and crackers when I arrived. It wasa great combination of sweet, tangy and nicely spiced from the apple butter which went great with the graham crackers and fruit I served it with.