My Cheese and Bacon Cookies are always an absolute hit. My family, friends and even the clients I baked them for back in the day had nothing but good things to say. They’re salty, savoury and great as party food or on a cheese board. They make pretty good snacks too (in moderation as they aren’t the healthiest cookies on the block). It’s a good way to introduce kids to slightly spicy food, but you can moderate or even omit the chilies of course.
Ingredients:
- 225g salted butter
- 225g salted butter
- 3 eggs
- 400g flour
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 2 partially cooked links of lingus*
- 75g bacon ends
- Chopped onion, green chilies and garlic
- Cheddar cheese
- Yellow food colour
- Salt to taste
It’s a pretty simple recipe with 3 basic parts.
1. Meat mixture.
2. Cookie dough
3. Shape cookies and bake
1. Meat mixture.
2. Cookie dough
3. Shape cookies and bake
The ingredients used in the 'meat mixture' don't have definite quantities. You can use as much or as little bacon, onion, garlic and green chilies as you like. I suggest using a decent amount of bacon, because that's where all the flavour is. Best to use streaky bacon or even bacon ends - because the fat has so much flavour.
*Lingus is a quintessentially Sri Lankan pork sausage, made with an array of local spices. It's best purchased fresh from a butcher, as the packeted variety available in supermarkets are precooked and don't have that intense flavour. If you don’t have access to the thoroughly Sri Lankan lingus you can use any kind of spiced sausage, chorizo for instance will be ideal.
To make the meat mixture:
1. Fry chopped bacon until golden brown.
2. Once cooked, remove the bacon from the pan and add finely chopped onions and garlic to the bacon fat.
3. Add a pinch of salt so that the onion doesn’t burn.
4. Crumble in lingus and cook till browned.
5. Stir in chopped green chilies.
6. Reserve a portion of bacon to garnish the cookies with and mix the rest into the lingus mixture.
To make the cookie dough:
7. Whisk softened salted butter till light and aerated.
8. Add in one egg at a time and a good pinch of salt. The egg won’t fully incorporate and the mixture will look a tad separated, as there's no sugar to help bind it as there in in normal cookie dough .
9. Add the meat mixture, grated cheddar cheese and flour, making sure the meat and cheese is combined evenly.
10. Spoon out the cookies on to a prepared baking tray and flatten slightly.
11. Beat the remaining egg with a drop or two of yellow food colour (or even saffron or turmeric) to make an egg wash and brush the tops. As the cookies don’t have any sugar to caramelize, the egg wash will help them get a lovely golden brown colour when cooked.
12. Sprinkle with a touch of salt, chili flakes and bacon bits.
13. Bake for 15 -20 mins in an oven preheated to 180C until golden brown.
Best served warm! These can be stored in an air tight container in the fridge for up to 5 days or frozen for ages!
