Fun with Cheese Crackers!

We try to give you informative articles in this blog but sometimes we just have to share our silly ideas! We thought of this activity for the holidays but realized it would be a good hostess gift any time of the year.

Why cheese crackers?

Cheese crackers make excellent gifts for 3 reasons:

1. They’re healthier than cookies and many of us are fighting the “Battle of the Bulge” during this pandemic.
2. There are all kinds of cute little boxes available online for any occasion.
3. Everybody loves cheese!

Recipes Abound

There are hundreds of cheese cracker recipes online. Any one of them would work for this activity.

We tried 4 of them before we settled on this tasty recipe: (Make it first so you know if you like it. If not, you can use any other recipe for the challenge.)*

Cheddar Cheese Crackers (low carb, gluten free, no wheat flour)

Loosely based on a recipe from Copy Me That

Ingredients for the base recipe:

2 cups almond flour (7 oz)
1 1/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese (4 oz) finely grated (or any hard cheese)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (15 g) (This provides more of a cheesy flavor, but it’s optional.)
1 teaspoon paprika, may be smoked
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon granulated onion
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
2 large eggs

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 375F and place the rack in the middle. Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the dimensions of your sheet pan.

2.Stir the dry ingredients (everything except the eggs) and pour into a food processor.

3.Add the eggs to the food processor and blend until a ball forms.

If you want to, wrap the ball of dough in waxed paper and refrigerate until later, or you can go on from here.

4.Place the ball of dough between 2 pieces of waxed paper or parchment paper. Flatten with your hand, then roll out the dough.

5.When it is about 1/8-3/16″ thick, cut it into squares or use a cookie cutter to make whatever shape you want.

6.Cut the dough and then re-roll the leftover part into a ball and roll again. (When you are using a cookie cutter, you may have to do this 4 or 5 times).

8.Bake for 16 minutes. Remove and let cool.

Store in an airtight container on the counter or in the refrigerator if you prefer.

The Fun Part

You will need:

4 eggs
2 oz of 4 different kinds of hard cheese
Double the dry ingredients in the recipe above.

Directions:

Finely grate the cheeses, so you have 4 piles, each one 3/4 cup or 2 oz. Keep track of which pile is which.

Double the dry ingredients in one large bowl. Mix well.

Separate into 4 equal bowls (weighing them is the easiest way).

One at a time, make 4 balls of dough by pouring each bowl of dry ingredients into the food processor, adding 1 egg and one of the grated cheeses. Mix until they form a ball.

When you finish each one, wrap the ball in waxed paper and refrigerate. Label each one.

When you have made all 4 different doughs, begin rolling them out and making the crackers.

You can use a different kind of cookie cutter with each ball of dough, keeping track of which shape was which cheese. Or, you could use the same shape for all of them but poke holes in them to identify them (as in, for example, 1 hole for the Parmesan, 2 for the Manchego, etc).

Pack the crackers into boxes or cookie tins with your challenge note:

*It’s amazingly difficult to find a good cheese cracker recipe although there are many of them online. If you have one, let us know in the comments and, if we get more than a few, we will put them together in a separate article.