Can You Handle the Cute? Black Olive Penguins

Kitschy, cute food is not usually my gig. But when I saw these guys over at  Foodie With Family I couldn't resist the adorableness.  Considering that we had a holiday potluck party to go to and considering that I have  4 year old who LOVES olives, why should I say no?  These were a huge hit all around. Little penguin army taking over the buffet table.

In this recipe at least, size matters.  I never realized that olives are classified according to how big they are.  But, after scoping out the grocery shelves, I realized they are canned and sold in at least four different sizes.  I used 2 cans of the largest size and one can of the smallest to create these guys. This made about 35 little penguin soldiers.

Ingredients

• 2 cans  colossal or jumbo pitted black olives, drained
• 1 can pitted black olives, drained
• about 4 ounces of cream cheese
• 35ish thin slices of the fat end of a peeled carrot
• A couple green onions, long green part only.

Method: 

• Cut a small triangle out of each carrot slice.
• Shove a triangle piece into each of the small olives.  You can use a skewer to poke the pointy end of the triangle through the wide end of the olive until it pokes out the narrow pitted part.  This can be tricky.  You can also squeeze the small olive until the wide end is oval shaped and pop the wide part of the triangle carrot in, leaving the pointy part sticking out.  I tried both ways.
• Using  a sharp knife, cut a lengthwise slice, part way through each jumbo olive. Lop of the rounded end of the olive so your penguin will stand nice and straight on his little carrot feet.
• Put softened cream cheese into a ziploc bag and snip the end off.  Use this to pipe cream cheese into each jumbo olive. 
• Use a toothpick to attach "head" onto cream cheese filled "body".  Poke all the way through and into carrot feet.
• Optional:  Tie a strip of onion around each penguin as a little scarf in case they need to keep warm.