Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Parmesan and Gruyere Crackers:


     Today I took my daily morning surf.... on the internet. One of my favorite websites to browse is foodgawker.com. A wonderful food website that is easy to navigate and filled with inspiring recipes. While pillaging the site for ideas I stumbled upon a recipe for parmesan crackers. Inspiration finally hit and I immediately read 6 additional recipes on making crackers. You guys should know....I almost NEVER follow a recipe exactly. I search for ideas, find something yummy to cook, and I always take into consideration what I already have in my fridge (I hate taking extra trips to the grocery store, I always end up impulse shopping). I took a risk in creating my own cracker recipe, not knowing if things would turn out.... but luck was in my favor today. This recipe results in crisp crackers with an intense cheese flavor, perfect on their own or layered with an apple slice and jam:


Ingredients:
1: 3/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
2: 3/4 cup finely grated gruyere cheese
3: 1 cup flour, plus extra tbsp for forming dough
4: 1/2 tsp salt
5: 1/2 tsp pepper
6: 1/2 tsp paprika
7: 4 Tbs butter at room tempurature
8: 4 Tbs ice cold water



Let's get cooking!
1: In a standard mixer (hand held mixer works as well as had mixing), combine cheese, flour, salt, pepper, and paprika:


2: Add softened butter one tablespoon at a time until mixed:


3: Add ice water by the tablespoon until the dough resembles this consistency:


4: On a sheet of parchment paper, roll the dough into a large disk. Use additional flour on work surface and hands to help form the dough:


5: Wrap the dough in parchment paper and let chill in the fridge for at least an hour and up to 24 hours:


6: After the dough has chilled, pull from the fridge and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 
7: Roll dough between two pieces of parchment paper until it is 1/8 of an inch thick:


8: Using a one inch in diameter cookie cutter, cut cookies out of the dough. (I don't have a cookie cutter so I used a champagne glass:



9: Place cookies on a parchment lined cookie sheet one inch apart and bake on upper rack of the oven (this prevents the bottoms of the crackers from burning). Cook time varies between 10 to 12 minutes. Yank the crackers out of the oven when they turn golden:



Enjoy!


Yours,
Nico


1 comment:

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