The Best Savoury Snack: Cheddar and Bacon Pastry Straws

I have always posted a lot of recipes on this site; most of them sharing my love for baking. Cakes, brownies, biscuits and desserts...they all reflect my sweet-tooth! Apart from a couple of Slimming World recipes, I have never shared any savoury snacks on my blog. Well, this is about to change! This cheesy bacon recipe is just absolute heaven; a concoction by Lorraine Pascale who is my baking idol (sorry, Mary Berry!). My mum used to make these when I lived at home and we all used to go crazy over them- these pastry snacks are so addictive and moreish (although not so good for the waistline I must admit!). Ready to eat in about an hour, these are a fab, quick snack idea if you are having 'party food' dinners over Christmas; you can boast about how you made them yourself and the flavours will win over your guests! I have made a few tweaks to the recipe which you will find below or you can check out the original recipe here.

Ingredients:

- 300-350g ready-to-roll puff pastry (you can make your own if you really want to impress but this is so much easier!)

- a little bit of plain flour for dusting the surface with

- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard (I personally think the flavour works better than English mustard)

- 100g mature cheddar cheese (or enough to sprinkle over the rolled out pastry and cover it nicely- we always have a tub of grated cheese so I didn't weigh it! Add less or more as you please)

- 8 rashers of bacon (although the recipe suggests more, I found I only needed 8 rashers to cover the rolled out pastry)

- 1 egg (beaten)

- ground black pepper

1. Dust your kitchen surface lightly with flour ready to roll out the pastry. Roll out the puff pastry block until it's about half a cm thick, making sure to roll it into a rectangular shape.

2. Once this is done, transfer the pastry onto a chopping board as you will be cutting into the pastry (no one wants slices on their kitchen surface!). Dollop the mustard onto the rectangular pastry and spread it evenly across the base using the back of your spoon. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over this so that the whole sheet is covered nicely, then season to taste with the pepper.

3. With the pastry sheet laying horizontally, place the rashers onto the cheesy base length-ways (your pastry length should match the length of the bacon rashers) and side by side so that the whole pastry ends up being covered.

4. Cut the pastry length ways into decent sized slices (Lorraine Pascale suggests in between each rasher but I found these too big- instead I cut mine about two thirds into each rasher, bearing in mind the slices are quite long so you get more out of the batch this way). Holding each slice at the ends, begin to twist these up quite tightly so that there are 4 or 5 twists in each slice.

5. Once all of them are twisted up, place on a baking tray (make sure to put some baking paper down first so that they don't stick!). Leave these to chill in the fridge for 15-20 minutes. In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 220℃.

6. Take the pastry twists out of the oven and lightly brush the beaten egg across the top of them all to give them a nice glaze. Pop them in the oven and cook for around 20-25 minutes (they took about 20 in a fan-assisted oven).

7. Once they are a lovely golden brown colour, take them out and place on a cooling rack. When they are cooled slightly, either eat them or place them in an airtight container and keep in the fridge. They make perfect snacks for taking into work or just to satisfy those evening munchies. Be warned though, you can't just have one of these!