Cheese biscuits (or straws)

So many recipes call for egg whites as a leavening or binding agent, leaving me with egg yolks sitting in my fridge (most recently coffee and banana vacherin). Because I loathe wasting food, I am constantly on the lookout for recipes to use up egg yolks. Usually I make lemon curd or custard but I felt like a change so I found this recipe for cheese straws and made them for an afternoon tea. I actually made them into biscuits because the dough was so fragile.

They made beautifully light biscuits, but were very fragile even once cooked. I have added some extra flour to the recipe to make them a little more stable. The flavour is great and I will definitely keep this recipe to use up future egg yolks.

Ingredients:

• 150g (5 1/2 oz) grated cheese (I used parmesan cheese in powder form and grated chedder)
• 100g (3 1/2 oz) plain flour
• 2 level teaspoons baking powder
• Pinch cayenne pepper
• 100g (3 1/2 oz) butter, at room temperature
• 2 egg yolks

Firstly, pre-heat oven to 180 and line two baking sheets.
In a bowl, place the flour and baking powder and rub the butter in to create a bread-crumb texture.

Add the pepper and cheese to mix and then add the egg yolks to combine the mix into a dough. You may need to add a little milk (1 tablespoon at a time), depending on the size of your egg yolks.

Turn the dough onto a flour surface and roll out to about 5mm thick. Cut straws or small biscuits out (I used a shot glass) and place on the lined trays.

Bake for 8 – 12 minutes, or until very lightly browned. Leave to cool on the sheet for 5 minutes before removing them to an air-tight container, or serving plate if using them straight away.