Cucumber dill cream cheese sandwiches are a classic southern finger food at parties, weddings, a ladies brunch, bridal and baby showers, but truthfully, they are just as wonderful just to enjoy anytime served with a side of sliced garden tomatoes for a light, cool lunch.
Cucumber Dill Tea Sandwiches
It sure is hot isn't it? And it's not only hot in The South, it's pretty much hot everywhere here lately it seems. Well, these little tea sandwiches are cool as a cucumber, literally!
Commonly found at weddings, bridal showers and parties of all kinds in The South, they are a delightful and cool lunch and a great way to use some of those summer cucumbers. Most often served on thin, white bread, crusts removed, and sliced into quarters, and honestly, a bit addictive.
In Kentucky, you'll often find a version of these cucumber sandwiches referred to as Benedictine Sandwiches, apparently named so after a caterer many years back and traditional fare at Kentucky Derby parties all across the South. Most often they are made with a few drops of green food coloring to give them a vibrant green shade.
Here's how to make them. As always, full recipe text with measurements and instructions, as well as a printable document, are a little bit further down the page. Just swipe or scroll past the step-by-step pictures below.
Some folks prefer to do a separate cream cheese only spread on the bread and then layer ultra-thinly sliced cucumbers on top of the cream cheese. Others coarsely chop the cucumber in chunks. I prefer the cucumber seeded, grated and mixed in. Cut a few thin slices off the end of the unpeeled cucumber if you want some slices for garnish, then peel, seed and grate the remaining cucumber, using a hand grater or your food processor.
Transfer cucumber into layers of paper towels and squeeze out excess moisture.
Repeat until cucumber is fairly dry.
Place into food processor along with the cut-up cream cheese. I like to use full fat cream cheese but you can also substitute non-fat cream cheese or neufchatel cheese if you prefer to lower the fat.
Add seasonings and fresh dill.
Process until smooth and chill to firm up if you need to.
Put a very thin layer of butter on each slice of bread. The butter is optional but does help to provide a moisture barrier keeping the sandwiches from getting soggy, especially when making them ahead. You can eliminate that step if you like.
Put a layer of the cucumber cream cheese on top of one slice and make a sandwich.
Repeat with half of all of the remaining bread slices. Cut crusts off of sandwiches and slice lengthwise into thirds, or quarter for finger sandwiches.
May also use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes if desired. Place sandwiches on a platter and garnish as desired. For a smaller cutter, you can get about 4 single bite pieces with much less waste.
For a large cutter you may only get one round per bread slice.
If your bread is super fresh and you experience squishing or splitting, you can also prepare the cutout pieces for individual bread slices and then butter and fill.
If you use a fork to scrape along the rind or a peeler to peel away only sections of the cucumber it makes a very pretty edge for presentation for topping your sandwiches. You can also mix up the cream cheese mixture and pipe a dab onto a single slice of bread, place a cucumber round on top, and pipe another dab of the cream cheese mixture on top to serve open faced. Garnish with tiny sprigs of dill - gorgeous!
Transform this into a cucumber dip for vegetables, chips and crackers, by using the juice from the cucumber and some extra mayonnaise.
Unable to view the printable below on your device? Tap/click here.
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