Although my friend Mo and her mom Cat might deny that Cheese Straws are indeed a Southern Classic; I made them and they are wonderful…but what do you eat them with?  The boys “liked them” but the oldest said they dried his mouth out a little and maybe some ham on them would be better.

Below is the recipe I used.  I am not sure I will make them again anytime soon.  Maybe I am not Southern enough or maybe I just wasn’t the biggest fan.  I have read other recipes and they say to bake until crisp.  Maybe I just need to play around with these some more.

I think more salt, and maybe some dry mustard would be an improvement or even some bacon grease, but then again there are very few things that bacon grease doesn’t improve in the kitchen.  Even our cat Thai would likely agree to this idea!

Our family cat: Thai

Sifting the dry ingredients together.

Creaming the butter and cheese together.  Total nightmare. Next time I am using the stand Mixer. 

Cool it buddy!

All finished

Ingredients:
A little less than 2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 t cayenne pepper

1/2 t kosher salt

2 sticks butter, at room temperature ( apparently softer than 2 hours in a 73 degree house)
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese although I hear parmesan works great too.

The How To:

Preheat the oven to 310 degrees F.

Use a mixer to cream together the butter and the cheese then set this aside.  At this point I was ready to throw in the towel because cheese and not quite soft enough butter were flinging  all over the kitchen.  Sift the flour, cayenne pepper and salt together  into a bowl.  Add the dry mixture 1/2 cup at a time into the creamed butter and cheese.  I was told to pipe them onto a cookie sheet using a large star tip.  That wasn’t going to happen in a million years.   I did not get a soft batter but more like a soft pie dough consistency.  Luckily my husband had a cookie spritzer and I used that, which was the perfect tool in my opinion.

Bake for about 15 minutes until set and lightly toasted.  Cool on cookie racks.