Crackers

Pardon my French, but I made fucking crackers the other day. Crackers! I think my thoughts on this can adequately be described the letters WTF.  I don't even know why I decided to make crackers. I saw something on Pinterest, one thing led to another, and next thing I knew I was in my kitchen with my tiny food processor, a cookie press, and cracker makin' ingredients. Oh, and E. She had put the iPad down and wanted to help.

I got the first idea to make little cheese cracker from Tasty Kitchen. Now, she goes way above and beyond and makes tiny little goldfish, football, and Pac-Man cracker cutters out of strips of a tin can. I could not even wrap my head around how to do this without ending up with bloody, sliced up fingers, so I skipped this step. And I actually used kind of a hybrid recipe between this and a recipe that came with my cookie press, which I was going to use to shape my cookies into bite sized little pieces of cheddar cracker perfection.

E helped me measure the ingredients. By help I mean she dumped the flour and cheese in a bowl and on the counter and started playing in it. Whatever. I was only making a half batch, because I've learned from my past mistakes not to go all gung-ho on experimental recipes (biscuits that taste like paste anyone?).

I made the dough, and it actually turned out well. I was so proud of myself. I put the dough in my cookie press. I decided the directions to use certain disc numbers in it weren't necessary and used a pastry? icing? tip on it instead. Why don't I just follow directions? I did get a couple little dough bits out, but they were getting progressively smaller. The tip was getting jammed up with dough, so I switched to a different tip. Then some plastic part got bent, a new disc got clogged, and  I had to push the dough out of the cookie press tube with a spoon.

Time for plan B. No way in hell was I going to be cutting out shapes form a tin can, so I scoured my kitchen for something to use for a cutter. I settled on a part from the cookie press. It was small and would make little circles, so good enough. I had to roll the dough out. We have a marble rolling pin, which I love in theory. However, I'm not really sure how to use a rolling pin. My dough was kind of uneven, but I made those little circles anyway. I did get a small blister on my finger from using my "cracker cutter," but it was worth it.

I had to almost double the recommended baking time, but they actually turned out not terrible. I should have rolled them out thinner because they were about three times normal cracker height and weren't crispy, but at least they were edible. I would call this recipe a success, and I didn't even think I needed a drink. Granted, I made them at about nine in the morning, and even I have scruples.