Recipe Review: Homemade Graham Crackers

Following on the heels of the homemade goldfish last week, I decided to give the homemade graham crackers a go this afternoon.  I'll apologize in advance for the fact that there are far fewer pictures in this review than in that one, I set my camera aside and completely forgot about it during the actual construction of the crackers.

At any rate, if you read the goldfish post, this is going to sound really familiar.  Here is the recipe I used, which is basically flour (AP, and whole wheat), butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, honey, water, salt and baking soda.  You'll note in this picture of my ingredients, I've left out the water and the brown sugar, that was carelessness, not design.

All of the dry ingredients go into a mixer or food processor (I used the food processor, since I'd already located it for the goldfish and didn't relish the idea of diving back into my boxes, not even for my KitchenAid.)  Give the dry stuff a quick whirl to combine, then add the butter, cubed and chilled, and pulse till you have something that looks like sand.  Add the honey and the water (note to self, find a better measuring device for honey, suggestions, anyone?), then remove to a piece of parchment, rest, roll out, cut and bake, 15 minutes at 350.

This dough is very tender, even after a 30 minute rest in the fridge, but since I was just cutting out squares, it worked fine.  I rolled the dough out between layers of parchment (best baking invention ever? I think so.) since it is also quite sticky.  I went for smallish squares, and made no effort at all to make them all the same size, I just cut the dough with a small paring knife, into roughly similar sized rectangles.  I like the little holes you get on commercial graham crackers, so I dotted these with a fork, and sprinkled them with sugar before putting them in the oven.  The sugar was totally unnecessary, I just thought it might be kind of pretty on the finished product.  Most of it fell off when I moved them off the cookie sheet at the end, though, so I probably wouldn't bother next time.

As for how they turned out?  Wellllll, unless I'm using them a delivery vehicle for melty chocolate bars and marshmallows, I can take or leave graham crackers.  But these are really good, much better than store bought, very crisp and with a distinctive taste of cinnamon without being overwhelming.  But really I made them for Max, who was filching them off the cookie sheet while my back was turned.  I will assume that since when I turned around he had AT LEAST three shoved into his mouth, plus two in each hand, that he also likes them.  He keeps asking for more, but these are more of a sweet treat than a regular staple of his diet, so he's had his fill for today.

Here's the finished product.  The recipe made enough (minus the ones Max ate) to fill this container, which should keep us in graham crackers for a week or so.

And here's Max laying on the kitchen floor eating the last graham cracker I let him have, he wouldn't smile for the camera, but I assure you he was enjoying it.

Oh, I forgot to mention, but following advice from the friend who recommended this recipe, I inverted the amounts of AP and WW flour, and they turned out just fine.  Next time I am going to try using more WW and even less AP, maybe offset the junk food like nature of this with whole grains?  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Recipe Review: Homemade Goldfish Crackers

I am a regular reader of the Pioneer Woman, and read all the recipes posted on on the website for ideas and inspiration.  I haven't made anything straight off the website lately, but when I saw the recent post about homemade goldfish crackers, I thought, I HAVE to try this.  Max LOVES goldfish, and I typically buy the whole wheat ones, but good golly miss Molly, those babies are spendy for being nothing more than fish shaped cheese crackers.  Once I read the recipe, I realized that I had all the ingredients on hand already, and the hardest part was going to be finding my food processor.

I chose to fashion myself a teeny tiny goldfish cookie cutter out of a soda can, following the directions posted in the original post, here, which took a little time, but was (sort of) worth it in the end.  I'll elaborate on that point later on. 

The crackers are nothing more than flour, butter, salt, cheese and water, as you can see here:

I doubled the recipe because the recipe calls for 8 oz of shredded cheese, but I had an unopened 16 oz block of colby jack in the fridge, so I decided to just use the whole thing.  The 16 oz of shredded cheese are joined in the food processor by 2 cups of flour, and 8 tablespoons of cold butter, cubed, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and pulsed till the mixture resembles coarse sand.  Then 4 tablespoons of water are added one at a time.  The recipe doesn't indicate whether to stop adding when the dough reaches a certain consistency, so I just added all four, and things turned out fine.  The dough gets wrapped in plastic and rests for 20 minutes in the refrigerator before being rolled and cut out.  With experience, I would say that a longer rest in the fridge would be better, the dough is definitely easier to handle when it's very cold, like most doughs with a high proportion of butter it gets more fragile as it gets warmer.

After a nice long rest, the dough gets rolled, cut and baked at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes.  I cut my dough into eight smaller pieces, stashing the pieces I wasn't immediately working with in the fridge, and returning my leftover scraps of dough there between rollings to firm up.  This is the cookie (well, cracker) cutter I used,

It's about an inch and a half long, and on the fragile side, but it got the job done.  Also, I set up sort of a jig to make sure that all my batches of dough got rolled out to exactly the same thickness.

So, what you are looking at is four stacks of three dvd's each that my rolling pin could rest on.  That way once the dough was as thick as those three dvd's, I couldn't roll it any thinner.  It worked really well, and made every batch consistent.  And yes, I was rolling it out between layers of plastic to reduce sticking.

These are the unbaked crackers on parchment lined baking sheets waiting to go in the oven.  Cutting out all those fishies was VERY tedious, and in future, I'd probably just make squares, because while the dough came together in about five minutes, I spent better than 90 minutes cutting allllllll the tiny fish out.  But for a first try, it was a fun project and made for a cute finished project.  Also, that narrow spot between the body of the fish and the tail? That, kiddos, is what we call a weak spot, and I can not tell you how many fish got rolled back into the ball of dough after they separated at that point. 

And the finished crackers!  As you can see, they are paler than normal goldfish, but I used colby jack not cheddar, so I didn't expect them to be as orange.  Also, you know, no dyes or artificial colors.

A nice closeup for my partner in crime, who never met a food closeup she didn't like, and a picture for scale.

My final take?  The recipe was easy, cheap, and the boy can't get enough.  He's figured out what cabinet they're in, and he keeps pointing and grunting, which in our house at least, is high praise.   I will FOR SURE be making these again.  I will also for sure be making them square not fish shaped, as I am certain they will be just as tasty when they aren't shaped like sea creatures.

Any hard cheese would work in these, a friend of mine mentioned that she made them once with a local Michigan cheddar that was delicious, and I'd even bet that if you fiddled with the amount of water, you could use a blue cheese if you really wanted to knock somebody's socks off.

One caveat, though, if you are going to make these for your family, do not do what I did and leave them in plain view on the counter for a day and a half.  They may be better for you than commercially produced crackers, but they still contain a laughable amount of butter, so you may want to store them somewhere that discourages you eating a handful every. single. time. you go into the kitchen.

A.H.

Recipe Redo, is it a Do or a Don't?

So, my partner in crime and I are having a deep, philosophical conversation about the worthwhileness of attempting to fix a flawed recipe.  The recipe in question should have been awesome.  It looked good in pictures, it sounded good on paper, but at the end of the day the finished product was underwhelming.

In this specific instance we decided that the best route to go was to simply find a new recipe online and try that.  But it begs the question, when a recipe doesn't live up to expectation, should you say screw it and move on, or attempt to remedy it?

For me it comes down to a couple of things.  The first is, how badly did I want the recipe to work out?  if it's something that I thought should be fantastic and I was super psyched about, I'll probably try to tweak it or fix it. I might do as we decided to do above and search for an alternate recipe for the same thing, provided that I know where the recipe went wrong, or have an idea of what I'm looking for in an alternate.  The other thing is do I think a redo will improve the finished product?  Recently I made some cornbread from a recipe off the Food Network website, it was okay, not great. The dictionary definition of underwhelming.  The thing that I realized was that I don't really like cornbread all that much.  So this recipe will probably not get a second chance, because I'm just not enthused enough about the finished product to go to the effort of adjusting the recipe or finding a new one, even though that would take me all of thirty seconds and one visit to Google.

What do you think?  Does a recipe that falls flat get a second chance, or do you just move on?


Also, by way of a post script, we will be debuting a new regular feature here at Eat, Read and Be Merry in a few days.  The Cook-Along.  Cook-Along has a few basic rules.  One, the participants will execute the designated recipe on the same day.  Two, the participants will execute the recipe EXACTLY as written, unless other wise agreed upon before hand.  Three, at no time will the participants attempt lemon bars, because lemon bars are my nemesis and my new oven is still really clean and I'd like it to stay that way.  So stay tuned, the first Cook Along should be up for your reading pleasure in a few days.  Ta-ta till then.

AH

Recipe Review, Cocoa Brownies by Alton Brown

My project last night was to make brownies from scratch. To complicate matters I was looking for a recipe that only called for basic pantry ingredients, since I only had cocoa powder in the house. Alton is my go to guy for basic recipes, so it made sense to start with him. Fifteen or twenty minutes of perusing the competition online convinced me that I was right. As a CYA here, I’ve linked to the recipe, but I won’t reproduce it here. I’m not sure how Mr. Brown feels about random strangers critiquing his work, sooooooo, we’ll just be a little careful.

As recipes go this was a pretty basic one, eggs, melted butter, sugar, flour, salt, cocoa, etc. The amounts were all reasonable, I mean, I just don’t like a recipe that makes 30 brownies and takes four cups of flour. I don’t keep those quantities on hand, plus, Andrew and I need nine or ten brownies, tops, not 30. I was able to do the whole recipe without an electric mixer. All the dry goods are sifted, which is awkward with the brown sugar, but whatever. Took me about fifteen minutes to put it all together, including buttering the pan and dusting it with flour (although I used cocoa powder, after all, they’re brownies). I followed the recipe instructions, which are pretty basic. I did make sure to add the flour last and to incorporate it with the minimum number of strokes necessary. This is supposed to yield a very tender finished product because the flour cannot build up any gluten as you stir it, which is the thing that makes your baked goods chewy.

Going into the oven, the batter was very thick. We like our brownies on the undercooked side here so I pulled them from the oven after about 50 minutes at 300. A knife inserted in the center came out with a few crumbs. As we also like our brownies warm we did not wait for them to cool completely before consuming them, but AB does say to.

The damage control portion of this evening’s event totaled one mixing bowl, three measuring cups, four utensils, and the sifter. Everything went in the dishwasher except the sifter and the bowl, and I didn’t even get cocoa on the floor, so cleanup was quick.

Finished product was soft, very crumbly, and very good. These are very dark brownies, and they were not overly sweet, which I like. They would pair well with ice cream, fruit, or additions like caramel or peanut butter swirl in the batter. I really want to chop up a RitterSport Milk Chocolate with Whole Hazelnuts and mix that in, but someone in my house doesn’t not like hazelnuts. So, that’s an experiment for another time.

Final Verdict: Good Basic Brownies. These are not apocalyptic, Earth shattering brownies, but they are easy, and they don’t require any special ingredients. They’d make a great base to a fancier dessert, or for cooking with a tiny helper, since there are no sharp utensils, and sifting would be fantastic to delegate to small, eager hands. Just be safe around the oven and turn a blind eye to the inevitable dusting of cocoa all over your kitchen.



As a side note, try the RitterSport Milk Chocolate with Whole Hazelnuts some time. They carry them at Target or some grocery stores. Most satisfying chocolate bar ever. Nice square bars, so you can easily break it up for multiple small servings.

AH


Edit:  This is now day four since I baked the brownies.  First, let's all cheer that they lasted four days.  Second, they get better with age.  Day four is much fudgier and less cake-like than day one.  Definitely worth the wait.