Alright, so folks have been asking about those Mickey Mouse themed appetizers I whipped up the other day. It wasn’t some grand culinary masterpiece, let me tell you, more like a kitchen experiment that mostly didn’t blow up in my face.
I started with the grand idea of, you know, making everything look like Mickey. Easy, right? Famous last words. My first thought was, okay, crackers and cheese. Can’t go wrong there. I also vaguely considered fruit skewers, trying to make Mickey heads out of melon balls and grapes, but that seemed like a one-way ticket to frustration city with toothpicks and wobbly fruit.
So, I focused on the crackers. I went to the store, hunting for the right stuff. I needed big round crackers for the face, and smaller round ones for the ears. You’d think that’d be straightforward. Took me a good twenty minutes in the cracker aisle, squinting at boxes. Finally found some that looked about right.
Back home, the real fun began. I got out the cheese – just plain old cheddar slices. I figured I’d use a small round cookie cutter for the cheese to go on the big cracker. That part actually worked. Phew. One point for me.
Then came the ears. Oh, the ears. My plan was to stick the smaller crackers onto the bigger cracker, sort of tucked behind the cheese. I tried a dab of cream cheese as “glue.” First attempt, the ears were lopsided. Looked like Mickey had a rough night. Second attempt, one ear fell off right as I picked it up. Drama.
I must have spent a solid half hour just assembling a few of these things. My counter was a mess of cracker crumbs and rogue cheese bits. I was starting to think maybe just a bowl of chips would have been fine. You know, I was doing this because my little one saw some picture online and was like, “Mommy, can we make these?” And you know how it is, you want to try, at least.
So, I persevered. I found that if I put the “ear” crackers down first, slightly overlapping, and then pressed the cheese-topped “face” cracker on top, it kind of held things together a bit better. It wasn’t perfect, mind you. Some Mickeys looked a bit surprised, others a bit squashed. But they were, undeniably, Mickeys. Sort of.
I also tried a variation with Oreo cookies. This was a bit simpler. I took regular Oreos for the face, and then carefully twisted apart some Mini Oreos, using the cookie halves (with the cream scraped off one side) for the ears. A little dab of the leftover Oreo cream helped stick the mini cookie ears to the big Oreo. These actually looked pretty decent, mostly because Oreos are already perfectly round and black.
- Big round crackers
- Small round crackers (or mini Oreos)
- Sliced cheese
- Cream cheese (the edible glue!)
- Regular Oreos (if going the sweet route)
- Mini Oreos (for the sweet ears)
The whole process was a bit fiddly. My fingers got sticky. I ate a lot of the broken “reject” pieces. Standard procedure, really, when you’re trying to make cute food. It’s not like on those TV shows where everything is perfect first try.
In the end, I had a platter of slightly imperfect, but definitely Mickey-esque, cheese crackers and some Oreo Mickeys. The kid was thrilled, didn’t notice the lopsided ears or the slightly-too-much cream cheese on one. She just saw Mickey and dived in. So, mission accomplished, I guess. It wasn’t about gourmet perfection; it was about making a little bit of fun.
Would I do it again? Maybe. But next time, I’m managing expectations. And maybe buying pre-made Mickey shaped crackers if such a thing even exists. That’s the real pro tip right there.
