Homemade Baby Finger Food: Cheese Straws

Baby FAN has been showing interest in picking things up and chewing at it. She loves to chew on those teething biscuits, the really hard type (she can chew at it for half-an-hour), recently I upgraded her to eating those softer and crumpier biscuits and Gerber's Strawberry puff, she is able to eat it without gagging. She just loves to chew on stick object, give her a spoon and she can chew at it for hours.

So, today, I decided to baked something stick-like for her, it was really easy to do, I did it in just 15 to 20 min (including baking time), it turns out really nice, the cheese give it a salty and sweet taste...yummy I ate 2 stick myself...ha ha.. Here's the recipe:

Cheese Straws

• 1 1/2 cup plain flour (I added 1 cup unbleach flour and 1/2 cup bread flour instead, oh and I added about 2 to 3 scope of formula milk powder to increase the nutritional content of the straws)
• 75g or 6 tbsp of butter
• 115g of grated Cheddar Cheese
• 1 egg, beaten (used 2 egg yolks instead if your baby is allergic to egg whites)

1. Preheat oven to 200 delgree celsius.
2. Place flour in a bowl, add butter and rub in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the grated cheese.
3. Reserve 1 tbsp beaten egg and then stir the rest into the pastry mixture. Mix to smooth dough, adding water if necessary.
4. Knead lightly and roll out on a floured surface to rectangel 30 x 20cm/12 x 8 in. Brush with the remaining egg.
5. Cut into strips and place on the baking sheets, spaced slightly apart.
6. Bake in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes until golden brown. Loosen from but leave to cool on the baking sheets.
7. Serve one or two to the baby and store the rest in a plastic box for up to 1 week.
8. Alternatively, you can freeze the sticks for up to 3 months in a plastic box, interleaved with baking parchment.

Above are a few pics of my baby FAN eating the straws.