Cucumber Sandwhiches

For a friends Bridal Shower I offered to make cucumber sandwhiches. I read up on every recipe I could find and there were...well not a ton, but enough to keep me busy for an hour or two. 

Apparently the authentic way to do it is a thin layer of butter on white crustless bread and then paper thin slices of cucumber. I tried it like that.  I thought it was gross. 

The Americanized way to do it is with a thin layer of cream cheese (or some variation of cream cheese mixed with something) and thinly sliced cucumber, or sliced to your desired thickness.  So I tried it like that.  Again, gross.

So Missy tried it.  I gave her one with a pre-mixed spread of cream cheese, chives and onion (I meant to just pick up cream cheese and chives but apparently didn't pay close enough attention.  Anyone else feeling the "Oops" theme I touched on in my previous post??) with a medium thick slice of cucumber.  She LOVED it!! I had a hard time keeping her from eating it all.

Then I tried it with a pre-mixed spread of veggie cream cheese and she did not like it one bit.  So I decided to stick with the chive and onion.  At least someone would eat them if no one else liked them, right?

Now I needed to decide on how to cut them.  I kept trying to make them into dainty triangular shaped sandwhiches but the bread just seemed too overwhelming for even these thicker slices of cucumber and the two layers of cream cheese that should have been teetering on overpowering the whole concoction.  So I ended up with these.

The half-cucumbers are the chive and onion spread and the whole cucumbers are the veggie spread

After Hubby got home from work I had him try out all the different versions and his favorite of course was the veggie spread.  So I started making some of those hoping that they would all be well received. 

I also made a bunch of ritz crackers (Veggie flavored.  Guess who picked those out?) with a smear of plain cream cheese and topped with a single cucumber.  Those were my personal favorites.  I guess they had the crunch I felt it needed.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm just not up-class enough to appreciate what the cucumber sandwhich is.

Unfortunately I had made these the evening before the shower because I had read I could store them for up to a week and just to add some moist paper towels to keep the bread from drying out.  Well mine ended up incredibly soggy from all the condensation.  Even my barely moist paper towels were drenched.  I felt like a balloon that someone had popped.

I set them up anyway, as these were highly anticipated.  Incredibly enough over half of the batch was gone.  I only went home with what hadn't been set out on the buffet! Yay!  They liked them, they really really liked them!! Or there were just enough people nice enough to try them and then discreetly dispose of them.  Either way I didn't go back home with two containers full of these pretty (I want them to be pretty!! I know in this picture they almost look like freakin pickle slices.  Hmm...not a bad April Fools joke actually...) looking finger..."sandwhiches".