Prosciutto & Cream Cheese Bites with Davidson Plum Pearls
Every great canapé is the same equation: something crisp, something creamy, something salty, something bright. This one solves it in fifteen minutes flat, and the bright part is properly Australian — Davidson plum, a native rainforest fruit with a sharp, tangy edge that cuts through prosciutto’s salt like it was born for the job. Which, botanically speaking, it wasn’t. But here we are, and it works.
Davidson plum flavour pearls deliver that native tang as tiny glossy spheres that burst on the tongue — canapé jewellery that happens to taste better than it looks, and it looks spectacular. No cooking anywhere in this recipe. Just assembly and applause.
What you need
- 24 gourmet wine crackers
- 250 g cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1 tbsp cream or milk
- Finely grated zest of half a lemon
- Cracked black pepper
- 12 slices prosciutto, halved lengthways
- 1 jar Davidson plum flavour pearls
- Small basil leaves, optional
Method
- Whip the cream cheese with the cream, lemon zest and a good grind of pepper until light and spoonable — a fork and thirty seconds of enthusiasm will do it.
- Dollop or pipe a teaspoon onto each cracker. Do this within the hour of serving so the crackers keep their snap.
- Fold each half-slice of prosciutto into a loose ruffle and perch it on the cream cheese. Ruffled, not flat — height is half the drama.
- Crown each bite with a quarter-teaspoon of Davidson plum pearls, added last so they stay glossy and whole.
- Basil leaf if you’re gilding, then straight onto the platter.
These earn their keep at everything from Australia Day to a random Tuesday, and they scale without thinking — one jar of pearls comfortably tops two dozen, and the cream cheese can be whipped a day ahead. If you’re carting them to someone else’s party, bring the parts and assemble on arrival; crackers built in transit arrive humbled. For a second lap of the platter, run the same equation with smoked salmon and yuzu pearls: different fish, different citrus, same standing ovation.
New to the little spheres? Our guide on how to use flavour pearls covers everything from oysters to pavlova, and the full flavour pearl range turns one platter trick into a repertoire.
