You know what I love? Snacks. Seriously, ask any of my friends, I never shut up about them. I especially love snacks that have that homemade flair. For one, making them makes me feel productive and healthy, even if the snack is cookies. And two, a lot of times they just taste better.

Let me just put my personal opinion out there: appetizers are fancy snacks. They’re basically the adult equivalent of when moms hand their small children bowls of cereal to tide them over until dinner, and I love them. Chips and dip, breadsticks, and, oh yeah – mozzarella sticks.

So the other night, I was hungry but not like, dinner-level hungry; hungry enough to want something kind of substantial but not a big meal. For some reason that night, my brain defined that as mozzarella sticks.

Once the idea was there, it wouldn’t leave. It stayed there all throughout my last class and on the drive home. But, ya know, that was okay because mozzarella sticks are fairly easy to make. It only requires three ingredients, two of which, the bread crumbs and the eggs, I already had. So I made a trip by the store on the way home to grab some string cheese and got to work.

Now these mozzarella sticks are baked and not fried, mainly because I always get nervous handling oil on the stove and have rarely fried anything in my life. Homemade mozzarella sticks taste better when they’re baked, in my opinion. I’m not sure what it is about homemade fried stuff but it leaves a funny aftertaste in my mouth.

To begin, just cut the cheese sticks in half, coat them in an egg wash and roll them in bread crumbs. I like to give them a second dip and roll as well, just to make sure it gets a nice, substantial bread crumb coating. Otherwise you’re just dipping hot cheese and that’s kind of weird.

These mozzarella sticks only took 30 minutes to prep and bake, which automatically puts them in my favorite food category. Of course the gooey cheese does that too.

They ended up being a nice, warm, feel-good, filling snack. Definitely the exact thing I needed after a long day, especially once I discovered the internet at our apartment complex was down and wouldn’t be up until the next day.

Yep. I most certainly needed comfort food at that point. And cheese always does seem to make me smile.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

6 mozzarella string cheese sticks

Italian bread crumbs

1 egg

HOW TO MAKE IT

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the cheese sticks in half.

Whisk the egg in a bowl until it’s nice and fluffy.

Dip a cheese stick into the egg wash and coat it all.

Roll the stick in the bread crumbs.

Dip it once more in the egg wash and give it one more bread crumb roll.

Place it on a cookie sheet lined with tin foil.

Repeat for each cheese stick.

Bake in the over for 8 minutes.

Grab some dipping sauce and enjoy.