Description
A delicious cream cheese based appetizer with pesto and sundried tomatoes. Beautiful red and green layers – perfect for Christmas! Make this the night before and just unwrap and serve!
Scale
Ingredients
- 8 oz cream cheese (Do not use low fat cream cheese.)
- 3/4 stick butter – softened to room temperature
- 8 oz sun dried tomatoes in oil (use paper towel to remove oil and chop finely)
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (finely shredded or grated)
- 4 oz pesto
Instructions
- Add an 8 oz block of cream cheese and 3/4 of a stick of butter, softened into a bowl. Use a hand mixer to mix.
- Use a small bowl (about 2 cups) and line with plastic wrap. Make sure you have enough plastic wrap so that you can wrap the top of your pesto torte when done assembling.
- Take a little less than 1/3 of the cream cheese mixture and pat it down on the bottom of the small bowl. I usually use a baggie sprayed with Pam so I can flatten the cream cheese mixture without it sticking to me.
- Then add about 4 oz of chopped sun-dried tomatoes (the jar kind, in oil). I usually ‘dry’ the sun-dried tomatoes with some paper towel so the oil doesn’t run onto my cream cheese mixture. Spread the sun-dried tomatos, making sure you spread to edges.
- Mix 1/4 cup of shredded or finely grated parmesan cheese with about 2 oz of pesto.
Spread 1/2 of the pesto mixture as a layer onto the cream chease mixture, making sure it is well spread to the edges. - Do a second layer of cream cheese (reserving enough to do one more layer), chopped sun-dried tomoatos, and the pesto mix layer.
- The final layer is the cream cheese mixture.Take a good look at the picture so you can see roughly how the layers are placed.
- Cover up with the cling wrap and refrigerate overnight.
- When ready to serve, remove wrap and flip onto pretty serving dish. Top with a bit of pesto and sundried tomatos, if desired.
Serve with sturdy crackers or sliced pieces of baguette. I usually have a small cheese knife to help serve this.
Keywords: pesto sundried tomato torte, cheese ball,