The Weird World Of Utah’s Cheese Balls

If you've been active on social media in recent times, you've probably noticed that a lot of folks are getting pretty excited about cheese balls.

I'm not talking about the crispy cheese puffs you can buy at the store (trust me, there's a whole debate on whether they should be called cheese balls or cheese puffs).

No, I'm talking about the roughly ball-shaped globs of cheese food served at parties with crackers and (for some strange reason) seem to have slivered almonds stuck to the outside of them.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good cheese ball, especially if bacon is invited to the party.

But some of these recipes floating around Facebook, InstaGram and Pinterest are just, well, wrong.

Here's a sampling:

• Walnut-pomegranate cheese ball -- Apparently this just seasoned cream cheese with chopped walnuts, with those nasty little pomegranate seeds stuck to the outside of it.
• Pumpkin cheese ball -- Apparently this is a favorite in Utah. This doesn't actually have any pumpkin in it, but your supposed to mold it to look like a pumpkin. The ingredients include ranch seasoning and crushed Doritos, with a baby dill pickle as the "pumpkin's" stem.
• Chocolate chip cheese ball -- OK, we crossed the line from savory to sweet on this one. Better swerve it with animal crackers, not Ritz.
• Utah cricket cheese ball -- The author of this recipe swears the crickets are deep-fried and perfectly healthy, but that's a hard pass from me.
• Beer pretzel cheese ball -- Beer in the recipe and pretzels stuck to the outside. It would take a lot of cheese to get buzzed off of this one.
• Severed foot cheese ball -- Shaped to look like a severed foot (complete with black olives for toenails), who wouldn't want commemorate a severed limb and eat olive toenails. Am I right?
• Maple-garlic cheese ball -- Mom always told me "Don't knock it until you've tried it," but those two flavors just don't go together.
• Braunschweiger cheese ball -- Looks like a shot from a sci-fi/horror flick (Google it), I just couldn't. Shouldn't. Wouldn't.
• McDonald's cheeseburger cheese ball -- Apparently this is a thing: Grind up a McDonald's cheeseburger (bun and all) and mix it with cream cheese. Some adventurous types have McDonald's fries poking out of the finished product.

I didn't include recipes or links to them because none of these creations should ever see the light of day.

Please!

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