Do you know that 6 o’clock feeling? Getting out of work, feeling slightly peckish, and in a real mood for a glass of wine?

In Spain you get some tapas with your wine, in France a little bowl of olives, in Japan some hijiki seaweed. But British pub culture doesn’t really provide for any of those nibbles that enhance the drinking experience (except if you consider salt and vinegar crisps to compliment any wine or beer).

We need to change that! Right now. Get out your baking gear and brace yourself for the star of all drinks appetizers: cheese biscuits! Their crumbly texture quickly transforms into a melt in the mouth sensation, cheese and butter fighting for your attention and little poppies bursting onto the scene as you delicately experience your first bite of these little treats.

It came in handy that I won second prize in a blogging competition a few months ago. The challenge was to create a visually creative blog post about cheese, which inspired me to make this cute Tarte au Camembert. The effort was rewarded with second prize, and I got La Fromagerie’s ‘Cheese: The World’s best artisan cheeses’. The book is a sort of cheese encyclopedia, with descriptions of cheese regions, the cheeses’ producers, and the cheeses’ taste – all followed by a selection of recipes at the back.

That’s where I came across this recipe for cheese biscuits. I’ve made many cheese biscuits in my life, tried numerous recipes and have my favourites, but I thought I’d give this one a shot. I only slightly changed the recipe by adding poppy seeds in the end.

Whilst these taste absolutely great, they’re a real pain to handle. The dough wouldn’t stick together, so I had to add a dash of cold water to somehow make it bind. Then, after I cooled the dough in the fridge for a while and was ready to cut the cookies, everything crumbled again and I ended up having breadcrumbs instead of nicely round cookies… So I shaped them into logs again, and this time chucked them into the freezer, for a more brutal frost therapy! That helped, and after 30 mins the dough was rock hard, perfect to keep its crumbs together, but still soft enough tocut. Victory. Phew!

So, instead of sharing this, painful recipe, I’m introducing you to my favourite cheese biscuit recipe instead. Enjoy, they’re so easy to make!