The Little White Book of Recipes - South Indian Home Cooking and More: Homemade Cheez-its

May 20, 2013

Homemade Cheez-its - A Pinterest Find

I had pinned this a while back on my food board, but never got a chance to make these until now. These are easy to make with just a few ingredients. The dough and preparation reminded me of pie crusts, so you know how easy this is going to be.

Homemade cheez-its

Cheez-its and gold fish crackers are a few of my daughter's favorite snacks. And, even her school teacher recommends gold fish as one of the "healthy snacks". But, I was never convinced that the bright orange "cheese" that sticks to your fingers could be really cheese and hence healthy.
When I saw this pin, I was inspired to try some. It was an instant hit at my home. I should warn you that even though the serving suggestion is for 4, it will be over in half an hour. Do not blame me!
The original author even made her own goldfish cookie cutter for this recipe. I wish to do that someday...

We used a couple of icing tips and veggie cutters for the small shapes. I also used my pizza cutter to cut squares (our version of cheez-it). A fluted cutter like the spoons we get in India (with a fluted wheel on the back) would be very helpful, I guess. My daughter was assigned the task of cutting and arranging, and I should say she did a pretty good job. This could be a great rainy day activity.

Ready for the oven

We put numerous holes (with a fork, tooth pick or skewer, depending on the shape) on the crackers but they still puffed up a little, when it came out of the oven. but, these were super crispy, so no complaints!

Baked Cheez-its

For my subsequent batches, I realized that rolling out a small portion of dough helps in rolling it out really thin. So, I pinched out a little dough and left the rest wrapped up in plastic while I worked on the pinched-off dough.

I also used my pizza cutter to cut some sticks, as an experiment. We baked these for an additional 5 minutes to avoid chewy bits in the middle.