By Keighley’s Mike Armstrong, an award-winning master baker with a big passion for baking...

CHEESE straws are great served hot from the oven, and they're perfect with a drink in the garden when the sun decides to shine.

Whilst I can concur with nibble knowhow on how to make them, I can't help thinking most people have missed a point.

Yes, cheese straws are a practical choice to pick up at the supermarket as an impulse buy – easy to eat with one hand, whilst scrolling your mobile in the other. Crunchy, intensely savoury and ever so slightly greasy, they're the grown-up equivalent of a packet of cheesy puffs, without that weird orange dust than can play havoc with your beard or a girl's party frock!

But the bought versions, often bland and brittle, all too frequently disappoint. Like sausage rolls, these are much, much better made at home.

My recipe is deliciously retro and will appeal to the professional snack scoffers – solid enough to provide a good foil to alcohol, with its only drawback being the threat of crumbs falling onto the carpet.

There are two schools of thought on types of cheese straw – the fancy continental sort, twisted, with posh cheese sprinkled on top, which you buy from the high-end patisserie shops; or the sort cut from shorter pastry, of older vintage from the 70s Be-Ro books and the standard cheese straw we all made at school, without the need for any silly twisting. Save twisting for the dancefloor!

Legend has it that cheese straws were first crafted in the late 1700s as a way to use up leftover British biscuit dough, a solution to avoid food waste.

All this 'grate' cheesy knowledge for your tastebuds helps make the cheese straw a hidden treasure.

They are undoubtedly the world's best party nibble – savoury, crisp and easy to make.

They'd be great during the Euros football tournament for your bored partner to make as a half-time snack!

RECIPE

CHEESE STRAWS

Makes 12

Ingredients:

80g/3oz plain flour, sift

Pinch of mustard powder

40g/1.5oz butter, chilled and cut into cubes

60g/2.5oz mature Cheddar cheese, grated, plus a little extra for sprinkling

1 small egg, beaten

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas Mark 4 and lightly butter a baking tray.

2. Sift the flour and mustard powder into a large mixing bowl, then rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.

3. Add the grated cheese and mix in well before adding the beaten egg into the flour; when the mixture starts to come together, roll into a ball.

4. Dust a work surface with flour, roll out the pastry into a rectangle and cut strips widthways into straws.

5. Carefully place the straws onto the baking tray, leaving a little space between them, then sprinkle with extra cheese.

6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden, cool for a couple of minutes. Best eaten warm.