"Mommy - may I have some crackers please?"

Ok ,so snackage had been going great, so I though. Granola bars, dried fruit, fruit roll ups, cheese... But apparently my two year old had been craving something more on the salty side of things and less so on the sweet end.

Now, her "crackers" were usually saltine-ish style and she has them with a little piece of cheese or some honey or just plain with a cup of milk. Crackers are notorious for several of my no-nos.

1) Most crackers are super highly processed and really terrible for you. I'm not even joking- traditional Saltines are placed as one of the worse possible things you could put in your body- they rank above microwavable popcorn in toxicity and chemical structure! Crazy!

2) Most crackers, even the more healthy variety, almost always come in plasticized packaging- and if you go the amazing organic route and get organic crackers, they even come inside individually wrapped plastic handfuls then also packaged in an outer layer of plastic.

So, could I actually make crackers?

The answer- YES!

I found this amazing blog called cupcake project which I intend to reference a lot more now, that is based around making things from scratch ( baking things, rather).

I used this recipe- http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2011/03/homemade-ritz-crackers-recipe.html - which is literally only four, baking soda, sugar, salt, some oil, and H2O- that's really it! I had all those things- no need for even a trip to the store. ( It also requires some sort of food processor or blender to get the dry ingredients super mixed throughout ).

I followed the recipe and considered for a spilt second purchasing a "cracker" cookie cutter on etsy for a few bucks... and then thought, hey, this bottle cap I have is out the right size and has a scalloped edge- voila!

So I rolled my dough and cut my crackers out. Pierced them with a fork ( apparently the little holes in crackers are for a purpose ,so you need them).

I added a little layer of course salt on top and baked- then I cooled and had about 6 or 7 cups of crackers!

They were a bit misshapen and not totally uniform, and they were a bit thick ( next time I plan on using a silpat baking mat and rolling the dough out a lot thinner), but my daughter loved them!

We've been snacking on them for over a week- they really taste like a little thicker version of saltines! Who knew? They work great in tomato soup too, guys. And all it took me was stuff I already had on hand and about 30 minutes.

I am going to play around with adding some cheese to the mix for cheesy 'ritz' crackers and also some peanut butter for some peanut buttery cracker options. :-)

#zerowastecrackerrecipe #crackersfromscratch #whoneedssaltines