Gouda cheese biscuits

[Chufi]

Gouda cheese biscuits

The province of Zuid Holland is justly famous for it's cheese: Gouda, Leidse (with cumin), Edam. The favorite way (for most Dutch people) to eat cheese is on a (often openfaced) sandwich, but over time a lot of recipes have been developed to use up all that wonderful cheese.

These little savoury biscuits are available in most supermarkets in the 'factory version', in some bakeries you can buy them fresh, but since they are really simple to make (and highly addictive) I thought I'd offer the recipe here.

Now, these will only taste as good as the cheese you put in. The more mature and piquant the grated cheese you use, the better the flavour of the biscuits will be. If your cheese is blander than you'd like, add a little extra salt and pepper to the dough, or even a dash of cayennepepper to spice things up a bit. Or add some crushed cumin seeds for a "leidse" version!

• 125 g selfraising flour
  
• 75 g melted butter
  
• 100 g mature Gouda, grated
  
• 1 eggyolk
  
• 50 ml milk
  
• salt, pepper, cayenne
  
• extra milk to glaze
  
• extra cheese for sprinkling
  

preheat the oven to 180 C / 350 F.

Mix all the ingredients for the dough together. You should have a fairly firm, but sticky dough.

Roll the dough into marble-sized balls and place on a lined baking sheet. Brush with a little milk.

Bake for about 10 minutes, than take from the oven and sprinkle with a little extra grated cheese (optional, but it does make them look better)

Bake for 10 more minutes or until golden brown. They should be quite dry and crispy, a good way to get that is to leave them in the oven for another 10 minutes or so after you've turned off the oven, to dry them out a bit.

They will also become crispier upon cooling.

see the Dutch Cooking thread for pictures.

Keywords: Easy, Cheese, Snack

( RG1719 )