We--Paul and I--have been on a mission. We'd like to serve Nora crackers with a little less additives and that are a little healthier. Some people might call that "processed" but I hasten to clarify. After all, if I'm using a food processor, it seems like the recipe is rather processed. My goal is to have fewer ingredients, adding more whole wheat flour when possible. And hopefully creating a cheaper product while I'm at it.
After one horrible trial-and-flop of a cheese cracker recipe, I came across Smitten Kitchen's Goldfish Cracker recipe. Deb even went as far as to purchase the little fish cookie cutter and mark the eyes and mouths. I, on the other hand, did it the very lazy way. I had had such a bad experience before that I couldn't possibly justify putting all the time into using my rather appropriate rabbit cookie cutter (Thanks, Lisa!) for a cracker that was going to immediately deform and reform into a horrible cheesy glob. No, we were going to just have to test this recipe without the extra effort.
One thing Paul and I did a bit of research on was finding a cheese that we felt was appropriate. After all, yellow cheddar is dyed cheese. But we didn't like any of the white cheddar we found. We think havarti has a nice flavor. And our neighbor graciously traded a baggie-full of dill for some banana peppers. And so my imagination was sparked, and my energy level was high. And I put forth effort, again, into making a--dare I say healthy?--cracker that met our flavor expectations as well.
I love the simplicity of Deb's recipe. Just dump it all in a food processor and let it do the work. Because I have a mini food processor, I had to measure out the ingredients and mix them in too batches, then knead them together by hand in case one half got more salt or dill than the other. I'm sure the extra step took a little longer, but the recipe itself went together so quickly that I didn't care about running my food processor twice. After kneading the dough together, I rolled it up in the Silpat and froze it for 10 minutes. Then, I rolled it out on the Silpat, carefully marked out squares with a butter knife and baked the crackers. Fifteen or seventeen minutes later, I simply separated the crackers with a metal spatula. These stored nicely in a glass jar for about a week and a half.
So now that I'm pretty confident in the cracker recipe, maybe I'll give the baby rabbit cookie cutter a shot next time.
Cost Estimate to make Havarti Crackers
- $0.05 WW Flour (Target)
- $0.01 AP Flour (Aldi)
- Free Dill (Friend/Trade)
- $1.79 Havarti (Aldi)
- $0.35 Butter (Costco)
- $0.01 Herbed Salt (From travels)
- $2.21 Total for about 80 crackers.
Yikes! Was it cheaper? Probably not by much. But was it better? For sure.
Recipe for Dilled Havarti Whole Wheat Crackers
Based on Smitten Kitchen's Cheddar Cracker recipe.
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 6 oz. (3/4 block from Aldi or 1 1/2 cups coursly grated) Havarti cheese, grated
- 1-2 Tablespoons fresh dill
- 1/8 teaspoon herbed salt
Combine ingredients in a food processor. Run until a ball of dough forms. (The original recipe says 2 minutes. Mine was faster than that in two smaller batches.) If dough feels too soft or difficult to handle, wrap in parchment and freeze about 10 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut cracker shapes as desired. Bake about 1/2 inches apart on cookie sheet, preferably lined, at 350 for 12-17 minutes. You want the crackers to be slightly browned on the edges.
