Everyone is working hard on their gingerbread houses, but not you. You want something different this year. Something savory instead of sweet. You crave… A cheese house!
How to Build a Cheese House
Minimize Waste and Use Good Ingredients
If you want to know how to build a cheese house, there are a few different ways. However, Seen and Green is dedicated to showcasing eco-friendly methods and healthy foods!
For example, when I searched “how to build a cheese house,” on Google, I found an article that advises the use of plastic Saran wrap and squeeze cheese from a can! Gross.
You can do better than that! Check out my cheese house ingredients and methods for inspiration. You can always alter the recipe to make it your own. I just want to show you that creative endeavors don’t have to be wasteful and food doesn’t have to be toxic.
Special thanks to Annie’s, Belgioioso, Organic Valley, Sprouts, and Tillamook for helping me build the cheese house of my dreams! I couldn’t have done it without these high-quality foods!
Ingredients
Use organic ingredients without toxic preservatives and cheese made from cows not treated with rBST.
Cream Cheese "Glue"
- 24 ounces of cream cheese
- 1/4 cup of milk. (Or enough to make the cream cheese malleable. Don’t add too much milk. It needs to have a thick texture that can be used as glue.)
Other Ingredients
- Breadstick Crackers (I bought 3 boxes to make sure I’d have enough but only used 2 boxes.)
- Pepperonis (no nitrates or nitrites)
- Green Olives (I happened to have garlic stuffed, but pimiento-stuffed would have been cuter!)
- Cucumber
- Bell Peppers (red and orange)
- Spinach
- Summer Sausage (no nitrates or nitrites)
- Cheddar Cheese
- Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies
- Pretzels or Pretzel Sticks
- Mozzarella Log (sliced)
- Powdered Parmesan Cheese
Cheese House Steps
- Cut about 12 breadsticks in half using a sharp knife.
2. In a large bowl, mix the cream cheese with milk until smooth, and no large lumps are present. (Using a mixer would help, but I don’t have one, so it took a while to whisk by hand!)
3. Arrange a generous amount of cream cheese onto a cutting board in the shape of a rectangle as seen below. This will be your foundation.
4. Stick 8 breadsticks into the foundation as seen below.
5. Using a spoon, spread some of the excess cheese up the breadstick wall. While doing this, hold the wall in place by setting your hand on top of the breadsticks.
6. Repeat this wall-building process until you have 4 walls. The exact amount of breadsticks can vary. I used a total of 22 half-pieces. Spread the cheese up both the inside and outside of the walls for an sturdy foundation.
7. Measure how long your roof pieces need to be and cut about 5 breadsticks to cover the top of the house. You may need more or less, depending on how big your cheese house is.
8. Use cream cheese to bond the roof base together, so the pieces don’t roll off. Set that bad boy on there.
9. Build the roof out of breadsticks bound by cream cheese as seen in the picture. If you have 5 on your base, the next row will be 4, then 3, then 2, then 1.
10. Carefully cover the outside of the roof with the cream cheese mixture. You can do this by holding the roof in your hands to cover it and then placing it back on top of the house when finished.
11. Use pepperonis as roof shingles, sliced olives as decorative accents, and cheddar for a door. Everything is held on with the cream cheese mixture. If you run low on this mixture, just scrape some excess from the bottom of the cheese house.
12. Slice a tiny piece off the rounded bottom of a red bell pepper. Cut pieces up to resemble flower petals and arrange them in alternating directions on a toothpick. Use a tiny piece of orange or yellow bell pepper for the center of the flower. This will hide the tip of the toothpick.
13. Carefully select beautiful pieces of spinach and arrange them in one direction on the toothpick, under the flower. Snip the back side of the greens as seen in the picture below.
14. Stab the toothpick flowers into thick slices of mozzarella cheese to hold them upright. Cut the mozzarella cheese the way you cut the spinach to make it line up nicely with the wall of the house.
15. Add mozzarella cheese slices to mimic stepping stones.
15. Cut a door frame from summer sausage and windows from cucumber. I cut a circular slice of pepperoni for the door knob.
16. Build a snow man using a hard-boiled egg, pretzels, cucumber, bell pepper, and pepperoni as seen below. Stab a toothpick in his bottom and stab that into slices of mozzarella to hold him upright.
17. Use more mozzarella slices to hold Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies in place. So cute!
18. Finally, sprinkle the entire setting with copious amounts of powdered parmesan cheese to mimic snow!
Thanks for Reading!
Thanks for reading! Happy Holidays! Please share this post!