{Recipe} Copycat Ritz crackers

I always have a packet of Ritz crackers handy for when Umar or visiting kiddies get hungry, I can just whip out a few and cut slices of cheese into cutesy shapes and they just devour them.

But then I thought of the amount of salt and ingredients with numbers in those crackers and I wondered if someone's already replicated the recipe with much more natural (unaltered) ingredients. And Stef from the Cupcake Project did! So I copied her recipe, cut out some more salt and I was happy with the outcome. 

The crackers are all different adorable shapes that scream homemade and they are delicious! I hope you'll have a try and let me know how they turn out! 

Copycat Ritz crackers (makes about 100 pieces depending on your cutter size)

Ingredients
2-2¼ cups bread flour (you can use all purpose flour)
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1½ tbsp raw sugar
2 tbsp oil (I used grapeseed but you can use extra virgin olive oil)
80 g unsalted butter (cold)
2/3 cup cold water
1 tbsp unsalted butter (melted) 

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fan-forced).
2. Pulse all the dry ingredients in a food processor. Add oil and pulse.
   
3. Add butter bit by bit and pulse until thoroughly mixed through. 
   
4. Add water little by little until dough comes together. If you used too much water, add a little more flour until dough comes away from the bowl. 
   
5. Roll out thinly (about 3mm) on a floured surface and cut with a scalloped cookie cutter (or whatever small shape you like).
   
   
6. Place on lined baking trays and pierce the surface of the cracker surface with holes (I used a candy thermometer like Stef but any substitute is fine). Brush lightly with the melted butter.
7. Bake for about 10-12 minutes and cool on wire racks. Enjoy!
   

Notes:

• If you don't have a food processor, you can quickly rub the butter into the flour with your fingers.
• Cold butter gives 'layers' to these crackers.
  
• Next time I might refrigerate the dough for 20 minutes before rolling and 10 more minutes before baking to keep the shapes more consistent.

Please leave comments on other yummy snacks for the kiddies! Thank you for stopping by!

{Recipe} Gingerbread biscuits

Our household loves ginger and with the festive season just around the corner, you see gingerbread men and houses everywhere. And the smell of them! Yum! We made muffins and scones and scrolls the past few weeks and so I thought why not gingerbread bikkies this time. 

This was a great baking activity with a toddler (although watch out! They'll eat all the decorations before they make it onto the biscuits). Without further ado, here is the recipe (oh after the pictures):

Gingerbread biscuits (makes about 20 large biscuits)

Ingredients:

125 g unsalted butter (softened)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 large egg
2 1/2 cups bread flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix butter, sugar and molasses with a wooden spoon.
2. Add egg and mix vigorously.
3. In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder, soda, salt and spices.
4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.
5. Refrigerate until dough is cold (about 10 minutes).
6. Preheat the oven to 180°C (170 fan-forced) while your dough is in the fridge.
7. Roll out dough to about 5mm thick and cut out shapes with cookie cutters.
8. Place on lined baking sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes.
9. Cool completely and decorate with royal icing, chocolate buttons or whatever else you fancy.

 

 

Tips and notes:

I use bread flour for cookies for chewiness. I don't sift flours for cookies, just the baking powder and baking soda.
I don't cream butter and sugar when making cookies because I find that they spread too much if I do. If you want to prevent spreading even more, omit baking powder and soda.
My current oven is quite hot and I almost burnt my biscuits so watch out so they don't become too hard if overbaked.

Royal icing: 

Whisk one egg white with 2 cups sifted pure icing sugar. Add more sugar if it's too thin and water by half teaspoonfuls if too thick.

Add a squeeze of lemon, vanilla extract, etc. for some flavour if you would like (would thin consistency).

Umar decided to cut his dough into numbers instead and so we took out the number cutters and I ended up with tens of cutters to wash. He had a couple of biscuits before they were decorated and a few little ones while decorating. And I found almost half of my chocolate buttons gone when I went to get my biscuits off the other bench.

The taste is not overly sweet so those with a sweet tooth might want to amp up the royal icing decoration to make up for the sugar, although hopefully not by much! I hope your family will enjoy these biscuits as much as we do!

Thank you for stopping by!

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