Spicy Cheese Straws

According to my particular palate, the "perfect" cheese straws are 30 seconds away from being too toasted, a dash of cayenne short of being too spicy, and just teetering on the edge of being too salty. They are tiny sticks of flavor dynamite, dangerous for their ability to destroy any notions of temperance.

My grandmother May gets the credit for my personal obsession with this snack. Her simple recipe calls for just five ingredients: Cheddar cheese, butter, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper. But when I shared her method with the Southern Living Test Kitchen, their batches came out shockingly flat. It was perplexing—until we started thinking like a Southern grandmother. Instead of weighing the flour, we scooped it by the cupful. This small change resulted in the ideal balance of fat to flour, yielding cheese straws with the proper posture.

Family recipes take a perilous journey on their way to us. The wisdom and intuition of our predecessors simply can’t fit on an index card. Unlike my generation, which documents nearly every meal on social media, folks back then never took any pictures of their food. In my memory, my grandmother’s cheese straws are perfectly golden brown, crispy, and deftly dusted with paprika (that she neglected to include in her recipe). But knowing my grandmother, her batches were likely a little different from year to year, depending on how meticulously (or not) she measured the flour or if she got sidetracked and baked them for five minutes too long (I inherited her distractibility). What matters is that she made them well enough to earn them a permanent spot in our taste memories, solidifying the savory delights as a prerequisite for all our Christmas gatherings.

 A full tin of cheese straws turns my family into snack predators. The hollow, metallic thwunk of the lid being opened is like blood in the water, signaling us to circle like sharks and snatch a handful while we can. Our entire stash is usually gone within two days. Mostly, that is. The portions shrink as the supply diminishes...until there’s just one left, lonely in his crumb-riddled tin. Eventually, somebody gives in and opens the container for the final time. We’re sad, but not devastated, because my grandmother taught my mother how to make them, my mother taught me and my father, my father taught my husband, and one day I’ll teach my nephew. My grandmother may no longer be with us, but her cheese straws always will be. And as long as we keep making them, there will never truly be a last one.