Frankensteined savory cheddar cheese shortbread recipe

Guest post by Tegan
#Recipes#snacks
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Photos by Tegan

My husband and I had a cheese shortbread that was so delicious that I wanted to try to recreate it at home. After looking through dozens of recipes none of them were exactly what I was looking for, so I grabbed what I liked from a few and combined them into my own creation.

They turned out great and were so easy to make! Here is the recipe I ended up with:

Ingredients

  • ½ cup butter, softened
  • 1 tbsp dijon mustard
  • 1 pinch ground cayenne pepper, or to taste
  • ¼ tsp ground black pepper
  • 8 oz very sharp cheddar cheese, grated
  • 1 cup flour

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Mix together the first four ingredients — this is easiest in a stand mixer using the whisk attachment, but could definitely be done by hand in a bowl with a whisk.
3. Add the cheese and flour, mixing until just combined and starting to hold together.

savory cheddar cheese shortbread recipe dough roll

4. Using wax or parchment paper, roll the dough into a log and freeze for 30 minutes.

savory cheddar cheese shortbread cut up

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5. Remove dough from freezer and slice into individual crackers of your desired thickness — I did about a quarter of an inch thick each.

6. Bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until golden.

savory cheddar cheese shortbread crackers

Now a few notes:

I like them with a lot of mustard, probably closer to 2 tablespoons, but if you don’t want to taste a distinct mustard flavor you’re better off sticking with the 1 tablespoon. I used a coarse stone-ground dijon and loved it, but I think just about any mustard would work well here. I have a delicious horseradish dijon that I want to try next.

The pinch of cayenne in the recipe will give them just a tiny bit of warmth and will appeal to the lowest common denominator of spicy-tolerance. If you like heat, definitely kick the cayenne up a notch.

These are great to make ahead and freeze for later baking. You could stop at the point of putting the roll of dough in the freezer, but I decided to pull it out after half an hour, slice, then put back in the freezer to eliminate the need to thaw before slicing and baking later.

If you do bake from completely frozen, they will just take a couple minutes more. No need to adjust the oven temperature.

Guest Post By: Tegan

Tegan lives in the suburbs of Atlanta with her husband and three awesome cats. She loves working with technology, playing video games, sewing, cooking, baking, and taking pictures of the cats.

Comments on Frankensteined savory cheddar cheese shortbread recipe

  1. Ahhh! My Grandma makes something like these… and they are my FAVOURITE. Sadly her recipes seem to have started to disappear from both her books and her memory. So I am SO thrilled to find this!

      • They turned out pretty well! Not quite the texture I had been trying to go for, but still were very tasty. I had changed up the recipe a little further, though, so it may be due to my frankenizing that they turned out a little bit differently from what was anticipated.

        I used hummus instead of mustard (wasn’t in a mustard-y mood and we still had a ton of leftover homemade hummus from dinner on Monday), added chives and a dash of garlic powder, and used a bit less cheese, just because when I pulled a block of cheese out of the fridge and the package SAID 8 oz, I panicked, thinking “holy crap, that’s a lot of cheese!” So I used more like 5 ounces.

        Thanks again for sharing the recipe with us! It went wonderfully with our soup. 🙂

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