Little Chefs: Homemade Cheddar Crackers

I am by no means a health nut. As much as I would love to be, I’m much too in love with refined white sugar to make the jump. I have no taste for store bought sweets and desserts, but I love a home baked concoction that won’t do anything for me except expand my waistline.

On the other hand, my daughters love all store bought snacks. What child doesn’t? The problem is that my kids want all the snacks I won’t buy them. {There I go being all mean and boring again.} Prepackaged, loaded with salt, sugar, and God knows what else.

Back in the day, I would purchase all those snacks in moderation. The girls mostly liked crackers and pretzels. In general, I always avoided fruit snacks, chips, and cookies. I’ve since wised up and stopped purchasing majority of the snacks I used to. I’ll pick up an occasional box of granola bars or bag of pretzels. And when I’m super weak, a bag of BBQ chips. Ugh, they’re so good!

I’ve tried “healthier” alternatives to their favorite goldfish crackers, only to find out that Annie’s Organic Bunnies weren’t winning any healthy snack contests either. Now I had to explain to my daughters that the alleged better option wasn’t going to make the cut anymore either.

What’s a mama with hungry snackers to do? Make my own, of course.

In an attempt to revoke the you-never-buy-us-anything card from my daughters, I played up on their love of helping in the kitchen. “Hey, let’s make Goldfish/Cheez-its!”

;

Star and Crescent Ramadan Edition

Homemade Cheddar Crackers {via Tasty Kitchen}

Ingredients:

• 2 cups, sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
• 4 tablespoons cold butter, cubed
• 1 cup flour
• ¾ teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons cold water

Directions:

Pulse everything (except water) together in the food processor until the dough becomes crumbly.

Pulse in water, 1 tablespoon at a time.

Remove dough from the processor, wrap in plastic, and chill for 20 minutes.

Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes. Place on a parchment paper or foil lined cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 15 minutes, or until crispy.

Allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Will I always make their snacks. Probably not. Unless I have a ton of time on my hands. Which I don’t. However, this was a fun activity for me and my girls and I can see us making these again. Note: I doubled the recipe (that’s why the food processor is filled to the max). If I was going to make homemade individual cut snacks, then I was going to make homemade.individual.cut.snacks. Ya feel me?

How do they taste? You know when you sprinkle cheese on top of something to melt and some cheese lands on the tray instead. Those crunchy, straight-up cheese bits. Yeah, like that. Now you can either be totally for that, or totally against it. We we’re feeling it. Yum.

Mini cutters were picked up from Williams Sonoma when I met Bakerella.

What’s typical store bought item do you now make yourself at home?