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 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.