Cheese puffs, cheese curls, cheese balls, cheese ball puffs, cheesy puffs, or corn curls are a puffed
corn
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
snack
A snack is a small portion of food generally eaten between meals. Snacks come in a variety of forms including packaged snack foods and other processed foods, as well as items made from fresh ingredients at home.
Traditionally, snacks are p ...
, coated with a mixture of
cheese
Cheese is a dairy product produced in wide ranges of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. During production, ...
or cheese-flavored powders. They are manufactured by extruding heated corn dough through a
die
Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life.
Die may also refer to:
Games
* Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers
Manufacturing
* Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...
that forms the particular shape. They may be ball-shaped, curly ("cheese curls"), straight, or irregularly shaped. Puffcorn is a similar food, without cheese flavoring.
History
Cheese puffs were invented independently by two companies in the United States during the 1930s.
According to one account, Edward Wilson noticed strings of puffed corn oozing from flaking machines in the mid 1930s at the Flakall Corporation of Beloit, Wisconsin, a producer of flaked, partially cooked
animal feed
Animal feed is food given to domestic animals, especially livestock, in the course of animal husbandry. There are two basic types: fodder and forage. Used alone, the word ''feed'' more often refers to fodder. Animal feed is an important input to ...
. He experimented and developed it into a snack. Clarence J. Schwebke applied for an improved extruder patent in 1939 and the product, named ''Korn Kurls'', was commercialized in 1946 by the Adams Corporation, formed by one of the founders of Flakall and his sons. Adams was later bought by Beatrice Foods.
Another version was created by the
Elmer Candy Corporation
Elmer Candy Corporation was founded in 1855 as the Miller Candy Company in New Orleans, Louisiana.New Orleans, Louisiana in 1936. The sales manager Morel M. Elmer Sr. held a contest to name the new product "CheeWees". The trademark was lost when the candy company was sold in 1963, but the family's
Elmer's Fine Foods
Elmer's Fine Foods, or just Elmer's, is a snack food company based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Elmer's started in 1946 in making snack products, including its popular CheeWees and Mardi Gras cheese curls sold in various southeastern states. Until th ...
continued to make the snack and repurchased the name in 1993.
Notable brands
In popular culture
A fictitious brand of cheese puffs called "Cheesy Poofs" has appeared periodically in the animated television series ''
South Park
''South Park'' is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Brian Graden for Comedy Central. The series revolves around four boys Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormickand th ...
''. The Frito-Lay company produced a limited, promotional run of the snack in August 2011.