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Everyone should have a Dawn at their workplace. Every holiday I’ve experienced since working at Unboundary has been celebrated in the truest sense of the word. There are decorations; everyone brings food; and there’s usually some sort of gathering-around-a-table moment, whether it be to share a meal or exchange gifts. You can see the magic she worked with Thanksgiving here.
This time around it was Valentine’s Day. I volunteered to make this recipe for sausage balls as I’d been looking for an excuse to try it for some time. I doubled this recipe with no issues, and I suppose it made around 60 sausage balls. I read in the recipe’s comments that several people had an issue with the sausage balls spreading while they cooked, so I made the dough the night before and put them in the fridge overnight. The next morning the sausage balls cooked perfectly.
Cream Cheese Sausage Balls
- 1 lb. uncooked hot sausage (I used mild Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage because I couldn’t find “hot” and everything still came out tasty)
- 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
- 1 1/4 cups Bisquick
- 4 oz. shredded cheddar cheese.
Preheat oven to 400°F, bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until brown
I combined everything in my KitchenAid and used the dough hook. Other than feeling a little barbaric – my poor mixer has only ever seen all that is good, sweet, buttery, or chocolate in the world – I was pleased to see that everything mixed together like a charm.
From there, I used a tablespoon to separate out like-sized sausage balls and placed them on a couple of jelly roll pans (you want a pan with edges to keep the fat from the sausage from dripping into your oven).
I was worried that the sausage balls would be bland without the hot sausage, so I decided to make a dip as well. With a quick Google search for “sausage ball dipping sauce”, I discovered that most varieties were simply a combination of mayonnaise and mustard. This horrified me a little bit, but I gave it a try. I started with Paula Deen’s recommendation of 1 cup mayo, 1 tablespoon mustard and thought it tasted like straight mayonnaise (ugh!). So I just started squeezing more mustard into the mix until I was satisfied.
Dipping Sauce:
1 cup mayonnaise
2 – 4 tablespoons dijon mustard, according to taste
A little honey would be pretty tasty in the mix, too.
I thought the sausage balls were flavorful and delicious even without the hot sausage, which may be why they made up most of my caloric intake that day. When a coworker told me he’d eaten about 15 of the sausage balls and loved the dip, I accepted the recipe “as-is” as a success (although I’m eager to try the recipe again with the hot sausage). Guys stuffing their faces is usually all the validation I need for cooking. I suppose that’s not setting the bar too high, but it works for me!
And a glance at the cutest little Valentine’s Day office party that ever was: