Cheese Straws

Bet they'll be gone before they've cooled down!

As promised earlier in the blog, here's Hubby's recipe for the Cheese Straws, which are singularly different to the Bread sticks, or Grissini.

Personally, I prefer the Cheese Straws - and have very great difficulty leaving them alone once they're baked!  LOL  I defy anyone to eat more than one at any one go.

CHEESE STRAWS  (makes around 20, depending on how big you cut them)

Ingredients :

50g Self Raising flour
25g softened butter
80g grated mature Cheddar
20g grated parmesan
pinch of smoked paprika
A little milk if needed to bring the dough together

Method :

Heat the oven to 200deg C.

Put a pinch of paprika into the flour and then rub in the butter.

Put the cheeses into the bowl and incorporate with the flour, using a little (tiny amount) of milk if the mix is too dry.

Roll out onto a floured board to about 3mm thick & then cut out fingers to your desired size.  Alternatively, use small shaped cutters for variety.

Place fingers/shapes onto a tray lined with baking parchment and place into the oven
for ten minutes, rotating the tray halfway through if your oven has hotspots.  Once cooked, cool on a wire rack.

For extra lovelynessess, brush with milk & dust with more parmesan or sea salt, prior to baking.  Personally, I adore the sea salt versions.

Note : "Hotspots"  - this is where an oven has areas which cook the food more quickly then others.  In our oven, the very front of the oven space will brown food far more quickly than the back, which I take to be because our is a fan oven.  Hence, we always need to turn our baking, in order to achieve an "all over" browning.