Golden Bamboos (Cheese Sticks Biscuits)

More Chinese New Year preparation sort of recipes. This cheese stick biscuits (cookies, if you're American *winks*) , is a recipe from a Moderator, Jam, from moms4moms.org. Moms4Moms is a forum for Singapore parents and topics on the board range from dealing with children to family issues to lifestyle issues. The forums' cooking and baking threads are always a chockful of interesting recipes to try out - especially familiar family favourites.

I like Jam's recipe because it doesn't contain any salt - the grated cheddar cheese is already salty in itself, and the baked cheese flakes gives the biscuits a nice crunch. Besides, the golden sticks look great for CNY particularly because they look like little bamboos - and this being the year of the Pig, with the bamboos ('zhu') sharing the same sound as 'Pig', Golden Bamboos and Golden Piggies sounds appropriate, doesn't it? *grins*

Egg Wash and Sprinkled Grated Cheese

Golden Bamboos all ready for munching!

Golden Bamboos (aka Cheese Sticks Biscuits)

Ingredients
200 gm butter
1 egg
325 gm of flour (sifted)
40 gm of corn flour (sifted)
150 gm of grated cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1. Beat butter and egg in a mixer till creamy, then add in the vanilla essence, the flour and the cornflour. Mix well.

2. Add in the grated cheese and continue mixing till all are evenly mixed.

3. Roll the dough into long strips. Cut the strips into about 1 1/2 inches (see picture) and place it onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.

4. Prepare an egg wash of 1 egg+1/4 tsp yellow colouring. Coat all the strips with the egg wash. (You can omit the yellow colouring, but the sticks will look a little pale.)

5. Grate more cheddar cheese and sprinkle over the strips.

6. Bake in a preheated oven of 180 deg Celsius for 18-20 minutes.


The cheese biscuit dough can actually be made into any shapes according to the fancy of the baker. Jam recommended using a cookie cutter to shape it. I suppose this is one recipe that can be versatile for many occasions, and is certainly a very kid-friendly project to do. The dough is malleable enough for smaller hands to get involved without creating too much of a mess. And the result is a biscuit packed with calci-yum for those growing bones. *grins*