I love cheese crackers. I used to love cheez-it crackers a lot when I was a kid. They are way too salty for me now. The cheese nips are ok but also too salty. As for goldfish, they’re bland. They don’t even taste like cheese to me, let alone cheddar. Then of course you have the store brands. The store brands always have less salt. My fav is the cheese bits from kroger.
Unfortunately, even the store brands are getting expensive nowadays. Why do I not mention the carb levels? Please, we all know those things aren’t good for you, I don’t have to point it out again. So I went on a search for a homemade cracker. I found a lot of fake crackers but I want a real cracker that’s grain free.
I found one. I tried it. Hubby tried it. We like it but you know I have to tweak it somehow. Honestly, the recipe tastes good just the way it is but it has issues with the methodology. I made it her way and I found myself peeling parchment paper off the backs of the crackers. They didn’t crisp up evenly, half of them were kinda chewy <though still tasty>. She suggests adding cheese powder or food coloring to make them bright orange but I don’t care what color they are and I doubt I’m the only person who can taste food coloring. Upon my third reading of her recipe post I realized the comments from her readers were more helpful than her actual post was so I’m gonna post the recipe here and point out how to make this a less aggravating process 😉
Be aware that this makes a small batch of crackers. While I have, in a fit of munchies, eaten almost all of them in one sitting, I think there are 4 servings per batch. I won’t tell you how many crackers it makes either because there is no way your crackers will be like my crackers. Sometimes I make small crackers, sometimes I make big crackers and sometimes I end up making both. No matter what size I make the whole batch fits in one of my soup bowls. They are way more filling than store-bought crackers. If you were to fill a 1 lb box with these I couldn’t eat them in one sitting even though I could eat that many cheese bits. Dusty, our cat, loves them too but since I know how much cheese is in them she only gets half of one cracker.
I’ve made them both with and without the little hole in the center of the cracker. It honestly makes no difference to how the crackers cooks. If you want a hole, add a hole. If you can’t be bothered, then don’t bother.
The worst thing about this recipe is rolling it out. Don’t roll it directly on the counter as you will never get them off again. Don’t roll it between sheets of wax paper as the dough sticks really, really badly to wax paper, use parchment paper instead. Do roll it out thin. If it’s too thick they will be chewy in the middle, thinner is better when it comes to crackers. But then if it’s too thin, it won’t want to peel off the paper. You MUST separate the crackers and space them out a little before you bake them. If you don’t then only the ones on the edges with get crispy and they WILL stick to that paper while they bake, which means you get to play the “peel tiny bits of paper off the crackers later” game. That game sucks btw.
This is one of the few recipes I have converted to metrics since the orig was half and half. The switch for that is under my scale which makes it annoying to go back and forth.
You can find a pic of my first batch on my instagram. I can’t figure out how to get it from there to here LOL.
Cheese Crackers – 2
100g almond flour
8g xanthan gum
4g salt
120g shredded cheddar cheese <I use medium cheddar>
3 T water
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Dump the dry ingredients into a medium sized bowl and stir well with a fork.
Add the cheese and stir again. Make sure the cheese is evenly coated in the dry ingredients.
Dump in the water and stir yet again. Once it starts to come together as dough you want to stick your hand in and form it into a nice ball.
Transfer the ball to a sheet of parchment paper. Pat it into a rectangle and cover it with another sheet of parchment paper. Roll the dough out, flipping it over occasionally and peeling off the parchment paper to help it stick less before recovering with the paper and rolling again.
**** I keep them from sticking by rolling them out, then peeling away the top paper. Next, I place the paper back down on the crackers and pat it gently before flipping the whole thing over so the bottom paper is now on top. Then I carefully peel off the new top paper and lay it on the baking sheet. Using a pizza cutter <or knife> cut the rolled dough into strips, rotate it and cut again, turning the strips into squares. Carefully lift each cracker and transfer them to the paper-lined baking sheet, being sure to leave a small space between the crackers. The whole batch should fit on a 10″ x 15″ baking sheet. If you plan to poke holes in your crackers do it after you move them to the baking sheet as the holes make them more fragile to handle.
Once you have the crackers laid out on the baking sheet, pop them in the oven for 25 minutes. Don’t bake them until they start to brown because they will taste burnt.
Pull them out of the oven and set the pan on the counter to cool. They won’t be crispy until they are cooled. I know that’s weird but it’s true.
Snack away 🙂
There are probably other cheeses that will work with this recipe. Let me know if you try any!
Have a happy!
TT
Tiger Talks 