July Daring Bakers' Challenge: Crackers

Wow - this month's Daring Bakers' challenge was a lot of fun! We had a very open-ended task, which made my creativity go crazy... the challenge? To make homemade crackers. As soon as I saw the challenge, I thought "you can make crackers??" and then I thought "cool!"

As a mother of young children, I knew which recipe I was going to try as soon as I found it on the Plan to Eat blog: homemade goldfish crackers. Seriously, what could be better than that for a family that buys goldfish crackers in bulk?

The first step was to put the dry ingredients in the Cuisinart

The next step was to add the little chunks of cold butter
(Ah ha! The secret to why these little fishies were so tasty)

After pulsing the butter and dries together, it was time for cheese... lots and lots of extra sharp cheese

The dough all ready for its 1 hour rest in the fridge

While I worked on the dough, Eric got creative making the
fish-shaped cutter out of a Diet Coke can. Didn't he do an amazing job??

These are my fish-decorating tools: a broken toothpick for the
eyes and a cut straw for the smiles

Isn't he cute???

Holy moly, but was this tedious! I wound up abandoning the fish shapes
after the pan was full; I used a larger circle shape for the remaining dough

The crackers weren't overly crackery. They were poofy, not at all crunchy, and more cheese puff-esque than I expected, but they were SOOOO good! Buttery and cheesy ... what more could a girl ask for? I gave one to Annika and she decided, while cute, they weren't what she thought of when expecting a goldfish cracker, so she didn't want any more. (In fact, she spit out the one I gave her ... I'm still working on not being offended.)  ;)

This challenge sparked my interest in making crackers: I found recipes for homemade graham crackers, pepper jack cheese crackers, and rosemary/salt crackers ... all of which I'd like to try in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned!

Our July 2012 Daring Bakers’ Host was Dana McFarland and she challenged us to make homemade crackers! Dana showed us some techniques for making crackers and encouraged to use our creativity to make each cracker our own by using ingredients we love.