These Chile-Cheese Cookies from Bon Appetit are so good. The chile gives them some zestiness and the cheese adds a savory note. The shortbread texture is perfect.

You do need a food processor for this recipe, because there’s really no liquid. You’re just processing until the cheese and butter break down enough to form a dough. It’ll take a little while, just persevere, it will get there.

I recommend that you form these into two or more logs as it’ll be much easier to handle. I did find it a little tricky as they’re so dry; rolling into a log sort of worked but I had better luck patting it into shape and then gently rolling to try and even it out into something vaguely round. There were some cracks going through them that I was a little worried about, but chilling seemed to take care of that. (Mine chilled for a couple of days.)

One other note. I couldn’t get much of the sugar and pepper (I used Aleppo pepper) to stick until I brushed a bit of water on. So, I recommend doing that as it didn’t seem to hurt the final product.

I didn’t count how many I got, but this recipe made a lot, certainly more than 24. They didn’t spread, so you can crowd your baking sheets a bit. I did find it was hard to tell when they were done, and a few of them got a little caramelized on the bottom, but were still delicious.