Easy Cheese Straws

These spicy cheese cookies, known as cheese straws in the South, are a popular cocktail snack, though they’re rarely strawlike. Pinkie-size biscuits is more like it, with a ridged surface that comes from extruding the dough through a cookie press. Supermarkets in the South often carry tins of stale cheese straws, and only occasionally does one encounter them home-baked, which is especially unfortunate, because few foods earn more raves for less work. To make them, you simply toss grated extra-sharp Cheddar in the food processor with some softened butter, flour and crushed red pepper and whir it with a tablespoon of cream until it makes a ball. Skip the cookie press. (The press, we're thinking, may be the reason nobody makes them at home.) In fact, it's far easier and more appealing to make true “straws” by cutting long, chopstick-slender strands from a rectangle of thin, rolled-out dough. A steady hand is required to transfer the strands of dough to a baking sheet, but this dough is incredibly forgiving — tears can be patched just by touching two broken ends together. If it weren't for the blade in the processor, a small child could make them.