To help make Thanksgiving entertaining a little easier, I wanted to share an appetizer recipe that is easy to throw together on a moment’s notice and doesn’t require any of the coveted space in the oven. So, I would like to share with you Happy and Yummy’s No Bake Cranberry Goat Cheese Appetizer. This six ingredient dish is festive and delicious, and assembles in under ten minutes. No heating, baking or cooking required!
All of the ingredients can hang around your fridge and cupboard for a week or more so you can always have this on hand if company just drops by. Or, take it to your next gathering and enjoy the “ooohhh what’s that?!?” you’ll hear all evening.
Ingredients
1/2 cup whole berry cranberry sauce
5 slices canned mandarin oranges
1/3 cup craisins
1/3 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
4 ounce log of goat cheese
Mixed peppercorn grinder
Instructions
Remove goat cheese from fridge and cut log into 4 or 5 round pieces. Place the 1/2 cup cranberry sauce on the serving plate and, using a fork, mush it up so it flattens out and doesn’t have gelatinous clumps in it.
Place one goat cheese circle on the plate and, using two butter knives, spread it out a bit. Then place about a teaspoon of pecans and craisins on top of the goat cheese layer, pushing them into the cheese slightly. Sprinkle with pepper grinder to taste. Then repeat this until all of the layers are assembled. Depending on how much you like pepper, you may want to leave out the pepper sprinkling on every layer.
Once you have the tower assembled, cut up the mandarin orange segments using kitchen shears in a small bowl. Dribble the pieces by hand onto the dip. Feel free to swirl the remaining juice from the mandarin oranges into the cranberry sauce if you’d like.
Serve with the crackers of your choice and enjoy!
The winter holidays here in South Florida certainly are different than what I grew up with in New York. Even after twenty years, it is still weird for me to wear shorts and sandals at Thanksgiving dinner.
There’s a big part of me that misses being able to store leftovers from holiday meals on the front porch when there was no room left in the fridge because it was so cold outside. But then there’s the part of me that never wants to shovel my car out of the driveway again. Ever.
So, in tribute to those of us that celebrate the winter holidays in flip flops, I thought I would give you a behind the scenes glimpse at what it looks like when I take the pictures of my Happy and Yummy goodies. The top picture is my older dog Finnegan who – unlike his baby brother Buford – knows not to stick his face in the food I’m photographing. He likes sunbathing by the pool when I take pictures on the patio. The pool is just beyond the crackers in the bottom photo. And yes, it is still warm enough to swim in it.
A very Happy and Yummy Thanksgiving to all of you and your families!
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