Cheese Biscuits

These biscuits taste like cheese straws and they are just as morish. The quantity of ingredients listed here will provide you with plenty of biscuits, but they store really well in an airtight container.

What you’ll need:

400g flour just plain no need to sift

6g baking powder mix this into the flour

250g butter straight out of the fridge, no need to bring it to room temperature

1 medium egg, separated into yolk and white (always take the eggs out of the fridge hours before using them for baking)

100g soured cream

80g finely grated cheddar cheese (mild or mature depending on how intense you want the flavour)

Poppy seeds or sesame seeds to sprinkle on top of the biscuits before baking

Method:

I use a food processor if you can as this considerably speeds up the making of the dough. Simply whizz together the flour and butter until a crumbly texture is achieved (this can also be done by hand of course). Add the egg yolk, soured cream and grated cheese and whizz into a dough ball.

The dough is pretty soft at this point so I like to divide it into two balls, wrap each in cling film and place them into the fridge to chill and firm up.

Approx. 30 mins later, remove one of the dough balls from the fridge and roll it out on a floured surface (try not to use too much flour) to an even 3mm thickness. I use a 5 cm diameter champagne flute (or cookie cutter) to cut out as many circles as I can before re-rolling the dough. Place the circles onto a baking tray quite close to each other – the pasty will shrink rather than expand during baking so the biscuits will not stick together. I use a silicon sheet, but due to the high butter content, there is no need to oil the baking tray. Brush each circle with the lightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds or both.

Bake at 190°C fan until golden (10-12-mins). Repeat with second dough ball for second batch.

Enjoy!