Description
A crowd-pleasing summer appetizer that can easily turn into dinner (you'll just want to keep eating it)! Goat cheese crostini with pickled strawberries is a delightful, unexpected, and bright way to celebrate strawberry season on the beginning of summer.
Ingredients
Units
Scale
For Pickled Strawberries:
- 1.5 cups fresh strawberries, halved (see notes)
- 1/2 - 3/4 cup rice vinegar (enough to fill jar halfway)
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns
- Water, enough to fill rest of jar
For Goat Cheese Crostini
- 20-25 slices of baguette, each 1/2-inch thick
- 2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 8 ounces fresh goat cheese (log form is best for this recipe)
- 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon honey
- A few sprigs of fresh thyme
Instructions
- Pickle strawberries. At least four hours before you plan to make the crostini, combine strawberry halves, vinegar, salt, honey, and peppercorns in a jar (see notes for recommendations). Fill the jar the rest of the way with water, place the lid on, and store in the fridge to pickle.
- Bake crostini. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Brush each side of each piece of bread with olive oil and arrange in a single layer on the baking sheet. Bake for 7-9 minutes, until golden brown and fragrant.
- Whip goat cheese. While the crostini is toasting, add goat cheese, 1 teaspoon of the remaining olive oil (feel free to add fresh if none left), salt, and pepper to a food processor. Process on a high speed for about one minute, pausing to push goat cheese down the sides as needed, until goat cheese is completely whipped and smooth.
- Assemble crostini. Once the crostini is done and cooled for a couple minutes, time to bust out the pickled strawberries! Spread each piece with goat cheese, top with a couple pickled strawberry halves, drizzle with honey, and sprinkle with fresh thyme leaves. Devour immediately!
Notes
- Jar recommendations. For the pickled strawberries, I love using a 16-ounce widemouth mason jar, though you can use other similarly sized jars if that's what you have.
- Goat cheese. You might have leftover whipped goat cheese, depending on how thick you spread it and/or how many crostini you end up making. Use it up with scrambled eggs, sandwich spreads, toast, crackers, or salads the next day!
- Bake time. Ovens differ, so you might want to check your crostini at 7 minutes to make sure it's not burning. The done signals are that your kitchen smells heavenly of toasted bread, and the crostini are golden brown. As they cool, they'll crisp up nicely. In my oven, 7-9 minutes is the sweet spot!
- Yield. You can really choose how much you want this to yield! I find that a 12-ounce baguette is more than enough to make 20-25 crostini. But you can make more baguette slices, more pickled strawberries, and more whipped goat cheese if desired. If you are deciding how much to buy for a gathering, I find that a 12-ounce (about 20-inch) baguette can get you close to 40 slices of crostini.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 7 minutes
- Category: Appetizer
- Method: Pickle; bake
- Cuisine: Italian-inspired
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 crostini
- Calories: 107
- Sugar: 2.9 g
- Sodium: 262.3 mg
- Fat: 4.2 g
- Carbohydrates: 13.3 g
- Fiber: 0.8 g
- Protein: 4.4 g
- Cholesterol: 5.2 mg