Better than Better Cheddars. These cheddar crackers are packed with pecans and spiced with thyme and hot sauce. Yes, a real treat that makes me nostalgic for cheesy cracker snacks from my childhood. The best part about these, aside from the taste and all, is that every single ingredient is recognizable and understood by anyone who can read the words in the recipe. A few ingredients, none of which are confusing. Sure, many store bought crackers and snacks do the trick, taste good and are easy to grab and munch… but it’s so nice to eat without the unnecessary ingredients and mystery flavoring. Hmm, I don’t know about you but all the “extras” lining the prepackaged foods in the markets are unsettling to me (creep me out), I much prefer to eat homemade snacks. I was excited to find this cheddar cheese cracker recipe from The Other Side of Fifty; what doesn’t sound appealing about cheese crackers? Not a thing… they’re delicious!

This recipe, like the Black Pepper Parmesan Cracker recipe, calls for a food processor. And still… I have no food processor but managed to make them anyway. The one problem that may come up is with the pecans – a stand mixer would not pulse and chop pecans up as a food processor would. I used my magic bullet, but if I didn’t have one I would would have used a knife. I love that there are pecans in this mix!

I made the two cracker types on the same day. I was intrigued to make the crackers side by side because they have a similar process but very different ingredients. A peppery parmesan vs. thyme, cheddar, and pecan. Yum… I’ll try both!

Cheddar Pecan Crackers
Adapted from The Other Side of Fifty

½ cup pecans
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese (room temperature)
¼ cup butter (room temperature)
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon hot sauce
1-2 teaspoons milk or half and half (may not need)

Be sure to have your cheese shredded and butter set out to be at room temperature.

Pulse pecans until finely chopped.  I left some bigger chunks in the mix as well. Place in a bowl and add flour. Whisk to combine.

Place cheese and butter in to the mixer/food processor and combine until smooth. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get a nice creamy smooth mix out of it with the stand mixer. I think with both the cheese and the butter being at room temperature it was easier than I thought to combine until smooth. However, it would be some work to do by hand. Add thyme and hot sauce and mix until incorporated. I put twice as much thyme as suggested and I may even put more next time. The original recipe calls for ¼ teaspoon, I added ½ teaspoon. We rarely use dried thyme and we happened to have a jar of it left over from last year’s garden. For hot sauce I used Sriracha as suggested and I made my teaspoon heaping. It had an evident yet subtle spice – really nice.

Add the flour pecan mixture and blend until it comes together. It may be crumbly but it should still stick together. If your mix is too dry add a small amount of milk or half and half until it all comes together – I did not have to do this. Remove dough from the bowl and form into a ball. On a clean work surface roll ball into an 8″ log. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. I refrigerated it overnight.

Preheat oven to 350°F and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. With a sharp knife slice log into 1/8″ rounds and place on the baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned. I flipped my crackers half way through baking to brown on both sides, but that’s not necessary. Place them on a cooling rack to cool before stacking and storing.

These crackers were delicious. Light and crumbly like a shortbread cookie. Cheesy with a little spice and beautiful flecks of thyme and pecans. They make a great stand alone snack or of course are delicious accompanied by a dip!

Last weekend I went on another internet cracker hunt. I found two recipes that had a similar method but completely different ingredient ideas.  One is this parmesan black pepper cracker recipe from Stresscake, elaborated below, and the other is a cheddar thyme cracker to be posted next time. Like short bread cookies these crackers are formed into a log, chilled, sliced and then baked. It was only a few weeks ago that I had made my first shortbread cookie ever and I loved it! I love that you can make it in two parts. Mix the dough today and have fresh crackers or cookies tomorrow. Somehow dividing the work makes the whole – I make my own crackers – concept a little less ridiculous.  But of course there’s nothing wrong with rolling out the crackers either!  My cracker recipe hunt is nowhere near over and I still plan on making the poppy seed crackers regularly as well as expanding with more recipes. It’s just nice to have many snack options! Crackers are awesome alone or with dip or cheese. Snack snack snack. Give these a try…

Parmesan Black Pepper Crackers
this recipe was found on Stresscake

1½ cups all-purpose flower
1 cup grated parmesan
2 tablespoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2/3 cup sour cream

The original recipe suggests using a food processor. I don’t have one. I’m sure the crackers could be mixed by hand but I decided to use the stand mixer instead and it seemed to work just fine. There’s always a way to get around using kitchen equipment you don’t have! Pretty much if you have a knife, spoon, and bowl – you’re set! On to the crackers…

Place flour, parmesan, salt and black pepper into the bowl of your mixer or food processor to combine (pulse or stir).  I used 2 tablespoons of fresh coarsely ground black pepper. Next time I make them I will do the same, however theses crackers are seriously black peppery – it may be a bit strong for some. I happen to love black pepper and thought the flavor was great; it’s probable that fresh ground pepper will make a stronger flavor, so if you’re not a black pepper lover cut back just a little.

Cut the unsalted butter in to ½” cubes and add it to the flour. Pulse or mix. Add sour cream and mix until combined.

Remove mixture from the bowl and turn it out on a clean work surface. Knead a few times to make sure any dry bits are incorporated.

Divide the cracker dough into 2 or 3 parts and shape each into a log. Wrap each well in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour or up to two days. I let mine sit over night.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Remove the first log from the refrigerator and unwrap. With a sharp knife cut into thick rounds. Cut them in to 1/4″ crackers or thinner if possible. Rotate the log as you slice to help maintain the round shape. Continue on and cut through the other logs.  Place cracker rounds onto the prepared baking sheets leaving about 1/4″ of space in between.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Rotate the sheet halfway between. I actually rotated everything half way between and baked them just a little longer. The thickness of the crackers as well as your oven will vary the time. My old oven fluctuates in temperature a bit – cooking time really does vary for me. After about 7 minutes I flipped each cracker in order to get an even golden tone. The cracker side faced the baking sheet browns first.

The crackers came out looking beautiful. My favorite part about their look aside form the coarse cracks of black pepper was how the parmesan somewhat melts out and browns when baked. Parmesan sparkles.

Tightly store for a couple of days at room temperature – but these crackers were best eaten fresh! We ate them with Roasted red pepper and olive cream cheese dip as well as with cottage cheese; any creamy dip would compliment the bite of these nicely.

Thank you Stresscake for sharing this delicious cracker recipe – you simply cannot find anything like it in the average grocery store! So, I guess you’ll have to make your own!

I’m attempting to broaden my taste for sweets and desire to make sweet treats. To do that, I’ll need a few good recipes. Lately I’ve gone through a few bad cookie recipes and began to feel rather unenthusiastic about making them at all. Luckily I stumbled upon this Meyer Lemon and Pistachio Shortbread from Cannelle et Vanille while searching for inspiration to use our Germack Pistachios. I have to say it was a pleasure to find this beautiful blog, the photography is absolutely gorgeous, she makes every entry feel like a dream – check it out! On top of it being so beautiful, it offered the perfect pistachio and cookie inspiration I was looking for, I had to make them at once!

This would be the first shortbread cookie I have ever baked. Certainly won’t be the last – they were delicious. Not too sweet with the perfect amount of lemon… and of course they’re loaded with butter too ;) The texture is nice and crumbly as you would expect from a shortbread cookie and they kept fresh all week. I doubled the recipe for extra enjoyment.

This recipe is adapted from:
Cannelle et Vanille

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
zest of 2 large lemons
about 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup pistachios, finely chopped
2 cups all-purpose flour

Prepare the ingredients. Be sure to soften the butter ahead of time. I used Germack Pistachios with the shell, so obviously I had to remove them before chopping. This probably took more time than the rest of the process. Once shelled, I ground them up with my Magic Bullet, it was a coarse mix with varying bits of pistachio. You could use a food processor or a knife to chop them as well. Zest and juice your lemons – the original recipe calls for Meyer’s lemons – I just used the only option of lemon from my local grocer and it worked; I admit I don’t know much about lemons! I’ll have to keep my eye out for Meyer’s lemons and see If I can notice a difference next time.

I used a stand mixer for this but you could easily do it by hand as well. First cream together the butter and powdered sugar. Pour in lemon juice & zest and mix until incorporated. Add flour and salt, mix, and finally include the chopped pistachios. Mix until all ingredients are well combined.

Roll the dough into 2 logs about 2 inches in diameter or so. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours. I wrapped mine in plastic wrap – I planned on chilling them all day before baking and I didn’t want them to dry out. Clearly my logs were not perfectly round, and once they sat on a plate for a while they became even less round. This didn’t seem to affect the taste what so ever.

Preheat oven to 350°. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Cut logs into ¼-½ inch thick disks and bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden.

As I took them out of the oven I was eager to taste, I grabbed one with in the first minute and it crumbled to pieces. My heart broke for a minute as I felt I might have failed with these cookies.  I allowed the rest to cool for a bit longer and they ended up setting perfectly. No failures here, they held together nicely and crumbled just as a shortbread cookie should.

A quick entry with a recipe for fancy butter…

1 stick of salted butter at room temperature
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary chopped
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon honey
2 cloves of roasted garlic
1/8 heaping teaspoon hot pepper powder

Combine ingredients into a small storage container and enjoy all week while you use it to make all your breads and crackers taste more exciting ;)

I love crackers but have not made them myself until recently. I noticed that we haven’t purchased many, if any, crackers in the past year and when I came across JoyTheBaker’s post called Sea Salt and Poppy Seed Crackers, I knew what I had to do. So, I made crackers and they were delicious. In fact they were so nice that I have made four batches in the past 2 weeks and I’m already thinking about making another! This marks the start of my cracker hunt — must find more recipes.
Cracker recipes, where are you?

This recipe is surprisingly simple to make, it requires very few ingredients and about 10 minutes of your active time with 30 minutes or so to bake. It also lends itself to be modified with other spices and flavors. I’ve only just begun to experiment with these.

The recipe below was found on JoyTheBaker.Com
Joy found it in The Complete Book of Cookies

Sea Salt and Poppy Seed Crackers

makes 20 crackers
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4  teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 Tablespoon butter, cold and cut into 6 small chunks
1 Tablespoon poppy seeds
6 Tablespoons half and half
sea salt & additional half and half for the topping (I used kosher salt instead)

Preheat the oven to 300° F. Sift together the flour, salt and sugar.  Add the butter and, using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it is in tiny bits and dispersed throughout the flour mixture.

Stir in the poppy seeds.

Add the half and half and mix to make a stiff dough.  Place on a lightly floured surface and roll out to about 8×10-inches.  Cut into 20 squares.

Place the dough squares on an ungreased baking sheet lined with parchment or foil.  Brush sparingly with half and half and sprinkle with sea salt.

Bake for 30 minutes or until crisp but still pale.  Transfer to a wire rack to cool and store in an airtight container.

So far the original recipe stands to be the best (of course) but I have started experimenting with adding other flavors which promise to make a nice cracker as well. I will post about them in the future. The additional ingredients in question are crushed red pepper, cumin, and sesame seeds… stay tuned for more cracker fun and dip ideas!