Quick & Easy Homemade Cheez-It Recipe


I have this friend, she makes a perfect French 75 (or sometimes 77) as soon as I walk in her door, no matter what hour of the day it is (don’t judge me), and there’s always a pile of delicious, homemade, healthy food served up with it. Her name is Macki, she’s a seriously prudent mama, and she also blogs about food and recipes at Family Kitchen. Today she is going to show us how to make healthy, preservative-free cheez-its in a totally do-able amount of time. Take it away Macki…

I’m a sucker for a cheese cracker, and when I’m hit with a craving it’s got to happen now. Unfortunately, I don’t keep these crackers around the house due to my cracker monster husband and baby boy. Now I’m stuck with the need of going to the store, but I found a way around it. I can whip up a batch faster than grocery store run!

Get the quick & easy cheez-it recipe after the jump…

How to Make Cheeze-its The Easy Way, by Macki

For those of you without kids, this may be a slight exaggeration. For those with kids, you get it. I’ve got 2 kids and going to the store means wrangling them into the car seats, driving to the store where they both have to have their own mini cart. God forbid another child is using one. Then, cart wars begins. Slamming into one another, tossing every fruit and veggie within arms reach into those carts (yes, I should be thankful it’s healthy food, but I’m not). Heading to the cracker/cookie/candy aisle to get these Cheez-Its is a fear of mine. You see I have never taken my kids down that aisle. I made the mistake of getting bread on the cereal aisle once, and bodies were thrown onto to the floor grasping Trix and any other colorful sugar filled box. Never again. Perhaps I could make a run for it? Oh, I forgot, before this grocery store scene of mayhem can begin my little guy has to wake up from his nap…in 2 hours.

This is what led me to my kitchen to peek in the cheese drawer and jump with delight at the sight of extra sharp white cheddar. After that, everything fell into place, including the extra unsalted butter that was left out at room temperature. The stars had aligned. Now let’s make these cheesy treats…

All you have to do it bust out the food processor with the grater attachment and grate 8 oz of sharp cheddar (or whatever cheddar is in your fridge, but sharp is best).

Remove the grater attachment and replace with the chopper. Add 1 cup of flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt (increase to 3/4 if your cheese in not sharp), 4 tablespoons room temp unsalted butter, 1/2 teaspoon of paprika, 1/4 teaspoon ground mustard. Pulse until is resembles a crumbly mixture.

Slowly add 2 tablespoons cold water until a ball of dough forms. Remove that ball of dough and divide it in half. Place between two sheets of plastic wrap and pop in the fridge for 20 minutes (I couldn’t wait so I just went with room temp). Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Roll the dough out between the 2 sheets of plastic wrap, my older non-napping kid loved this.

Use a pizza cutter to slice into squares. I gave this job to mykid, which she is very proud of, although her squares were diamonds of varying sizes, but I don’t mind. Use the flat end of a toothpick (or break on in half) to poke a hole in the center of each cracker.

Line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment and transfer the sliced cracker dough. They can be pretty close together because they don’t really expand and it’s always exciting to have a few ‘doubles’. Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until they are slightly golden (I like mine dark golden). If they are soft in the center, continue baking for a couple minutes.

Remove from oven, let cool enough to eat, and scarf them down.

Hi, it’s Jaime again. Macki, you’re the cheesiest. So, Scarlet saw these pictures and now we are planning to make some of our own cheez-its tonight. Right after I get done baking ombre cakes, inspired by Macki’s round up of 10 Beautiful Ombre Cake for Summertime Parties. Thanks ladyfriend!

by

27 Comments

{darlene} @fieldstonehilldesign

this looks great. hmm. before I dive in, do tell. How on earth does one transfer those precooked crackers from the cling wrap to the parchment paper without it taking all day or destroying the crackers? Thanks!

Reply
Betsy

I have not made them, and I am not Macki… but I would start by flipping the whole mess over (plastic wrap and all) onto the parchment, and then peeling the plastic off… kinda like pie crust maybe?

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tara

Cheez its are my absolute favorite! Thanks for sharing the recipe, I’ll be sure to make these soon!

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Emily

My husband loves Cheez-its and I am a sucker for cheese crackers of almost any kind. Will definitely have to try these out! Have you ever tried them with gluten free flour of any kind?

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Amanda

This sounds incredibly tasty, but I do have a suggestion for future recipes. At the end of the post, please consider consolidating the whole recipe into a recipe format, rather than a tutorial format. There’s no way I’d print out a recipe with pictures of how to use a food processor, rolling out dough, AND a narrative. Right now, if I wanted to use this recipe, I’d have to copy and paste it into a word processing program, get rid of the pictures, and get rid of extra sentences that aren’t direct instructions for cooking. It’s a lovely post, blog wise, and I understand that this sort of thing “sells” readers, but it isn’t functional, you know?

Additionally, it would be much quicker to make glorious, tasty cheese-its if you only had to read the recipe, and not the extras.

Reply
kdt

@Amanda…Did you really think they were thinking of YOU when the tutorial/recipe was written..Let’s use some common sense, grab a pencil and paper and write it down..Quit complaining

Reply
Julene

@kdt, I was actually thinking along the same lines as @Amanda. I usually prop up my iPad in the kitchen and follow the recipe that way but this one was difficult to follow because it wasn’t laid out in a typical recipe format. And I thought Amanda was simply making a helpful suggestion, not complaining. Your response to her was very rude, and rudeness is just as unpleasant to a reader as complaining is, if not more so.

Reply
caleighsi

Amanda, I agree with KDT to an certain extent. the writer of this post is probably aware of the fact that other blogs/recipes are structured differently and she chose not to follow that and do things her own way. maybe a little more difficult for those who are used to a lot of convenience but it doesn’t take much to grab a pen and paper and write it down. it’s certainly a lot less work than the copy and past process you explained (also a little dramatic, lets not try to guilt the writer into doing our bidding by exaggeration.) Maybe what KDT was trying to really convey was that it’s awfully pretentious if you to assume that the writer of this blog was putting things out into cyberspace for your consumption alone. She writes for the masses and she chooses her medium. your “suggestion” is a passive aggressive critique on someone else’s creative process. that’s the part that wasn’t welcome.

Reply
AtlKate

Geez people. Does every comment section have to devolve into this kind of argument? I don’t think Amanda was being “passive aggressive”. I think she was commenting that it’s hard to have the recipe be functional in this format. No need to defend the blogger’s creative process.

Personally, if you use Word, I find it easiest to to copy and paste the whole shebang and then choose the little Paste Options menu that will show up at the very bottom. Just choose the “A” icon and it will only keep the text. Easy and you won’t provoke these SJW type arguments on a cooking blog.

Let’s all get along and not ascribe motives where they don’t exist.

Reply
Sara

What a great idea! One little suggestion: if you can keep the kiddos from eating the raw dough, use vodka instead of water (a trick I first picked up for making pie crusts, but useful in any kind of dough where you want it to be flaky and not chewy). The alcohol bakes right out, and you don’t need to be as careful with adding the minimum amount possible.

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Emily

My daughter and I just made these and they turned out great! The recipe was extremely easy to follow and the dough was easy to work with. We didn’t have any problems transferring them to the baking sheet and didn’t need any extra moisture to make the dough easier to work with.

Thanks for sharing!

Reply
Patty

I made a similar recipe and they did not stay crispy. They were still good but if there is a way to keep the crispiness, I would like to know.

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Bekah

Just made them. YUM! I ended up needing to work with smaller amounts of dough (4 sections rather then 2) but I was able to follow the recipe exactly which for some reason, I can’t usually do and often need more of something to make it work. This recipe is great! Hoping they stay crispy! I found that the hole in the center needed to be bigger than I expected in order to see it after they cooked, and the dough quite thin. Love them, thanks for sharing Macki’s recipe.

Reply
meerkatbz

I love you. Really. First of all, I moved away from the US a few years back, so I’ve been leaving a cheez-it-less life of sadness. Then when I do go back, i always refrain myself since I turned “paleo’ish”. And while I won’t be adding flour to my cheez-its, you made me realize I don’t have to give up cheez-its forever!! 😀 – greetings from switzerland!

Reply
Lisa

Perhaps the dough could be rolled out between two sheets of parchment paper, or parchment paper on the bottom and plastic wrap on the top and then just transfer the whole thing to the baking sheet.

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Reply
ormommy

THANK YOU! I cannot believe how ridiculously easy this recipe is…and for the first time in my life, a recipe actually turned out perfectly! They are DELICIOUS! I added ground flax seed to batch #2 to see if that works too!

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