Cooking with Kids - Cheese Straws.... | The Diary of a Frugal Family

I know I’ve said this before but just in case you missed it, I’ll say it again 🙂 I think it’s really important that we teach our children to cook. I spend lots of time in the kitchen with my two and we all really enjoy the time we spend together in there.

I want to share some of the things we cook together with you but I also want you to join in with your children, so I’m going to have a cooking with kids challenge every fortnight and I’d love you to join in.
I’ll post a recipe on here and then you have two weeks to go away and make it with your children and add you recipe to the McLinky that I’ll put on the original post. At the end of the fortnight, I’ll round up all of the recipes in one post (lots of linky love) and I’ll ask an official adjudicator to choose a winner who will receive a prize.

To give you an idea of the sort of thing I’ll be posting, here’s what we’ve made this afternoon, our own version of Cheese Straws – known in the Frugal house as Cheesey pops:

150g Self raising flour

1/2 tsp salt

30g margarine

75g grated cheese

1 egg

2 tablespoons of milk

Preheat oven to 200c/400f / Gas mark 6

Rub the margarine into the flour until it looks like very fine breadcrumbs and then add in the cheese, leaving a handful for later.

Beat the egg and the milk together and stir all but one tablespoon of the mixture into the cheesey flour and mix it to make a dough This is the bit that kids usually love as it involves getting their hands in the bowl and getting squidgy – Master Frugal however, hates this bit which means that I have to do the squidgy bit.

Roll the dough out to about 1cm and you’re ready to cut out your strips to make the traditional cheese straws.

Because we like to be a bit different we use cookie cutters and cut shapes from our cheesey pastry mix.

When you’ve made your straws or shapes, use the rest of the egg mixture and brush each shape with it, then sprinkle the shapes with the leftover cheese and put them on a greased baking tray.

Cook for about 10 minutes or until the cheese is all bubbly and they are a nice golden colour.