Cheest Twists

Ingredients

Makes: 1 bowlful

• 150g Red Leicester cheese

• 40g butter, softened

• 160g plain flour

• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

• 1/2 teaspoon mustard powder (optional)

• milk, as required

• plain flour, as required

 

Method

Prep: 20 mins | Cook: 15 mins

Grease a large baking tray with butter. Preheat the oven to 190 C / Gas 5.

Grate the Red Leicester and place it in a mixing bowl. Cut the butter roughly into cubes - this makes it easier to work with - and cream the two together. Don't worry if it looks a bit of a mess, this is a very rustic snack!

Add the flour to the bowl (there’s no need to sieve) and the salt. If you want, this is the time to add 1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard, for a stronger flavour. Mix all the ingredients together to make a dough, usually you'll need to add milk until it comes together, but make sure you add very small amounts at a time. Now you may have a sticky dough, put a small amount of flour onto the mixture (too much and you’ll dry it out) and lightly knead it in your hands. Now you’ll have what appears like a speckled bread dough.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough, using a floured rolling-pin, to a thickness of 3mm. Cut off the rough edges of the rolled out dough to make a square/rectangle. Cut the square into longish strips, I usually cut mine 7cm long and 3cm wide.

Hold both ends of a strip and twist one of your hands to make a twist in the strip, this'll make it resemble a double helix, then transfer to the baking tray. Do this for all the strips and repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have none of the dough left.

If you want a shiny glaze on your cheese straws, use a greasing brush to distribute small amounts of egg over each cheese straw; but as I said earlier, this is a rustic snack and looks better without the glaze.

Place the cheese straws in the oven for 15 minutes or until the cheese straws have puffed up and are golden-brown. Use a palette knife to scrape the cheese straws off the baking tray and place them in the oven, unlike many other things you may bake you don’t need to wait for this treat to cool! Place the cheese straws in a bowl and garnish with a dusting of flour. They taste great warm but they’re still very pleasant served cool. Enjoy!

Tip

Don't worry if the cheese straws are slightly burnt around the edges, this adds colour and texture and should not be considered as a bad thing.