Black Olive and Cream Cheese Penguins

Cut a slit in the jumbo olive from top to bottom. Carefully fill with cream cheese. (I used to spoon it in, but it took forever – just fill a corner of a heavy duty plastic storage bag with cream cheese and cut off a tip and squeeze, or use cake decorator frosting bags.) As the cream cheese fills the olive, you’ll notice the ‘white’ of his ‘tuxedo’ showing.

Slice the carrots less than 1/4″ thick. Cut out a notch in each of the 20 slices, saving the notches. Set the jumbo olives on the carrot slices, large hole down.

Use the cut out notches from the carrot slices as the beak in the small black olives. If needed, cut a small slit in the olive to better insert it.

Put the small olive on the jumbo olive and attach with a festive toothpick.

If you are really ambitious, you can make little scarves to go around their necks with pimento or roasted tomatoes strips.