Roasted Garlic Asiago Cheese Ball

What would the holidays be without a classic cheese ball!?!
This bad boy is full of great flavor.
One of my favorite food smells next to bacon or onions frying would be roasted garlic, mmmm can't you just smell it?
I am all about quick and easy appetizers, and especially during the holidays.  There is so much going on, I love to cook but I want to make things go as smooth as possible.

There are only a few ingredients and a few easy steps to make this.
Also, bonus make a few balls at once, wrap them separately in plastic wrap pop into your fridge bring out when you have company or bring as a hostess gift.  Going to Aunt Mary's for Christmas? Bring a cheese ball and a box of your favorite crackers, she will love it!

Just for the record I do not have an Aunt Mary. ;)
I have so many cheeseball recipes it's embarrassing.  Sometimes I like to make the cheese mixture into something other than a ball, like a wreath, snowman, tree, lots of individual mini balls to name a few!

You can roll them in so many different toppings pecans, walnuts, chives, parsley, crushed pretzels, bacon bits, sesame seeds, red hots NO I'm kidding!!!  Unless you have no sense of taste or are pregnant do not add red hot candies.

What you need:
2 Heads of garlic
6 oz cream cheese, softened
1 Cup Asiago cheese, shredded
1/4 Cup greek yogurt
2 Tablespoons Parsley, chopped
1/4 Cup Pecans, chopped
Olive oil for drizzling
*A dash of liquid smoke, optional

How to make it:
Start off by preheating your oven to 400 degrees
Cut the heads off your garlic, exposing the cloves, peel away any loose skin
Place garlic heads face up in tin foil drizzle with olive oil, wrap garlic in the tin foil and roast for 40 minutes
While your garlic is roasting away, mix your cream cheese, yogurt, asiago cheese & a dash of liquid smoke (lq. smoke is optional), set aside
You're still waiting for your garlic aren't you?  Yup.  Ok well start chopping your parsley and nuts.
Place them in a bowl and set aside.
Once your garlic is done, now you need to wait for it to cool off.  Kinda a waiting game for this cheese ball process I guess huh?  Hummm maybe  not as fast as I thought it was.
Alright, I think your garlic is cooled off now, here is the fun part!  Squeeze each one of those little garlic cloves out of the casings into your cheese mixture.
Mix very well, you do not want big chunks of garlic so you might want to cut them up or if you have a food processor, use that.
Next, if you have disposable kitchen gloves you might want to get those out for this part.
Scoop up all that fragrant garlic cheese mixture and start forming into into a ball, working it back and forth in both hands.
Place that ball in plastic wrap and pop into your fridge for at least 1 hour.
Ding ding ding 1 hour is up, your cheese ball is now more firm.  Unwrap and roll in the nut and parsley mix.
Place the cheese ball on a pretty little serving plate and surround by your favorite cracker!
Hope you enjoy!

*Here's my excuse for not doing a new appetizer for a while, I had a big fail on a new aptz bite I was trying to come up with, that I will continue to work on.
I'm sure I will be asked to bring an appetizer to Christmas so mabye I will do a new dish & share that with you all soon!