Holiday Cooking with Aunt Dancey

I have been dying to learn how to make cheese straws for a while now. My aunt is an expert. Her's are always wonderful. Last weekend I spent a cold, dreary Saturday baking trays and trays of these yummy treats at her house. We made two different kinds - spicy cheddar and blue cheese. They both turned out great. Thanks Aunt Dancey!!

We started by grating 2 kids of cheese in the food processor, sharp white cheddar, and regular sharp cheddar. You can not use pre-shredded cheese. It has to be shredded by hand or in a food processor.

For the blue cheese version, we combined 1 pkg. of blue cheese crumbles with the white cheddar and weighed it to make sure that we had 1 lb. of cheese. For the spicy cheddar version, we just weighed out 1 lb. of cheese.

To mix the batter, combine 1 lb. of cheese, 3 cups of sifted flour, 2 sticks of butter, 1 teaspoon of salt, and as much or as little cayenne pepper are you would like. We also added a few shakes of crushed red pepper.

Combine your batter together and start putting it into a cookie press. This will help to lay out the little rows.

Here are the precooked straws on parchment paper ready to go.

Drinking pink champagne while cooking always helps make the food taste better.

These little guys only take about 8 - 10 minutes at 375º so you have to watch them closely. After they come out of the oven, sprinkle them liberally with kosher salt. Wait until they are starting to cool before slicing them into 2" pieces.

The blue cheese batter was a little softer, so we decided to make little biscuits and they worked out perfectly.

All packed up carefully and ready to be put into gift bags for my friends.

Aunt Dan had another project going on simultaneously. She was making dog shaped cookies.

Here is a closeup of a few of her cookies. I hope they turned out well!