Friday 17 July 2015

Guest Post By My Mum: Savoury Cookies (Cheese Biscuits)

Before I'll get back to show you more from my very hot weekend, here is a guest post my Mum has sent me this morning:

Cheese Cookies
[Meike says: These are savoury cookies or cheese biscuits, and they are very popular with all our family and friends.]
Whenever someone throws a party in my circle of friends and acquaintances, I am asked to bake and bring my homemade cheese-cookies. They are really easy to make, young and old people love their taste, and so I thought it would be nice to share the recipe with Meike's blog readers.
We recently got a very kind letter from a reader, which was also a reason for my decision to give you the recipe, it made us so happy.
Also, this week we celebrated our Golden Wedding anniversary, and I baked hearts for our guests.

Here is the recipe:

250 g flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 level teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon pepper (paprika) powder "edelsüß", that means sweet, not the hot one
1 whole egg plus 1 egg yolk
125 ml cream
125 g cold butter, cut into small pieces
200 g grated cheese, Emmental or Gouda or Gruyere
1 egg yolk for spreading

Make the dough and put it for at least 1 hour (better 2 hours or over night) into the fridge. 

Then flatten it on a floured surface 1/2 cm thick and cut out the cookie shapes you like, if you have no cookie cutter, you can use a small glass. 


Spread the cookies with egg yolk and decorate with poppy seed, sesame seed, caraway seed or coarse salt.
Bake cookies in the oven for about 12-15 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius, or at 160 degrees in a fan oven. Don't let them get too dark.
When they have cooled, you can keep them in a tin box for a few weeks, but I never manage this, because they always are all eaten very soon!

- - - End of guest post - - -

As you can see in the last picture, the cheese hearts were not the only baking my Mum had done for this special occasion. She also made some mini muffins for those of her guests who preferred something sweet to go along with their glass of champagne or cup of coffee.
What can I say - I was very sorry that I didn't get to eat a single one of those delicious heart-shaped cookies, or the mini muffins! We (i.e. the immediate family and closest friends only) had been out to dine at a good restaurant to celebrate my parents' Golden Anniversary, and by the time we arrived at their place afterwards for some more drinks and conversation to wrap up the evening, I was way too full up to eat anything else.

But there will always be a next time :-)
(My sister can make these, too - I think I am the only one who has not yet tried her hand at this recipe...)

21 comments:

  1. Happy Anniversary! What a joyful accomplishment!
    And thank you for this recipe. I love savory things like this, much better than sweet.
    When you say pepper powder, I think you must mean what we would call sweet paprika. Not a black pepper which is never sweet. I can't wait to try this!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, thickethouse for your congratulations.
      Yes, I wrote sweet paprika powder, I don't know, why my daughter changed it.....;-)

      Delete
    2. Hello Kristi, yes, sorry about that - I changed paprika to pepper because in England, when people say pepper they mean paprika (according to the context you usually know which type of pepper they mean - the pepper as in salt and pepper or the pepper as in the vegetable).

      Delete
  2. It was much more difficult than normal to comment today! Many hoops to jump through.......Hope it goes back to the old way!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll have a look at the settings. I have certainly not changed them, but you never know, sometimes blogger does funny things without us knowing...

      Delete
  3. Happy Anniversary to your parents!

    I think it's time for you to give making the cookies a try! ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! You are absolutely right! ;-)

      Delete
    2. Thank you, Mary!
      Too hot right now to get the oven going... (a good excuse, isn't it!)

      Delete
  4. Those look delicious. I'm going to try them. Thanks, Meike's mum! And congratulations on the wedding anniversary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Frances, to success!

      Delete
  5. Many congratulations on your Anniversary. I'm not sure which paprika is which because I only know of paprika or smoked paprika. I shall also be giving this a try and if I do it this afternoon (to go in the fridge overnight) I shall just use paprika and see what happens.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Graham for your cangratulations.
      If you will take hot paprika, don't take too much. Here we get a powder called "Paprika edelsüss", it fits very well.
      To success!

      Delete
    2. Well that's stage one done. The dough is in the fridge. Exciting! I've never made biscuits before: sweet or savoury.

      Delete
    3. I am so pleased to know that you have actually made something after a recipe from my Mum, Graham! Have the biscuits turned out well?

      Delete
    4. Well I'm not sure that the final result has been a total success I'm sorry to say. It needed a lot more cooking than the 12 minutes mentioned. I didn't have any of the cheese recommended (although I have a fridge full of different cheeses) so I chose an extra-mature vintage cheddar which gives a lovely taste but perhaps has too much fat. I'm not sure of the relative fat contents of the cheeses. The result is still an enjoyable cookie but I shall have to try again next time with the proper cheese.

      Delete
    5. Thank you for letting us know, Graham!
      Well, the length of baking depends on so many things, doesn't it, and every oven is different. Whenever I make something in the oven, I check frequently because I can never rely on the time stated in a recipe. In your case, the fat content of the cheese you used probably had a lot to do with it. Glad they were still enjoyable.

      Delete
  6. Happy Golden Anniversary to your parents, Meike!
    And to your Mum, what fantastic looking cheese biscuits, I bet they taste as good as they look! I love the heart shaped cookie cutter. xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Kay!
      I knew you were going to love the hearts :-)

      Delete
    2. Thank you Kay for your congratulations! Try the cookies, you will like them in every other shape, too!

      Delete
  7. Looks and sounds lovely. I like the idea of an egg yolk for spreading. I haven't heard of that before. Will try it next time we have people over.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Jenny! Please let us know then how it turned out for you.

      Delete