mulberryshoots

Nobody in their right mind would make cheezit crackers from scratch, right? Wrong. Only someone whose granddaughter loves Cheezit crackers and then saw a cooking show where a Mom made them for her away-at-college freshman daughter would take it on. It looked easy enough online.

But there were pitfalls along the way. The dough, made with high quality grated cheddar cheese, unsalted butter, flour, spices and ice water needed to be blended in a food processor and then chilled for half an hour. That was the easy part, believe it or not. The process for rolling out and then cutting squares of uniformly thick/thin dough was more challenging. Making a hole in the middle with a skewer wasn’t hard. But then getting the little critters off the mat and on to a cookie sheet so they didn’t touch was, well, haphazardly successful.

The first batch was unacceptable because I hadn’t used a ruler to make the straight lines so that the crackers were uniformly SQUARE. They looked terrible, to be honest, but they tasted great! It must have been the Lawry’s garlic salt and pinch of cayenne that I added that gave the crackers a little kick!

The second batch was mildly more successful from an appearance point of view. I rolled out the dough and with a ruler, cut the dough with an antique crimp-edged rolling tool. That made the edges look nice but they still stuck to the sili mat when I went to line them up onto the baking sheets. This time, they didn’t stick together and they also tasted good – very cheesy, crunchy and with a bite at the end. I let them cool and then put them in plastic containers along with other goodies (dry roasted, unsalted nuts, dried fruit, giant Hershey bars, green tea and chai teabags) already packed into a USPS carton.

As I was making them, I swore to myself that this was the only time I’d go to this much trouble for so little return. After tasting them after they came out of the oven, I wasn’t so sure. Honestly, they taste so much better than Cheezits from the grocery store. I think I might make cheese straws with them the next time and forego the itty-bitty tiny squares. Or make bigger square crackers. Who knows? The aroma in our kitchen was heavenly when all was said and done!