Craisinets

Posted by - Rena

I know, I know... you're thinking that making Raisinets is a cop out. You'd be wrong.

I have a very bad relationship with melting chocolate. I've done it once successfully and all the other times ended in disaster or as a messy clump of hard chocolate. I was thinking about all the yummy candy bars I love including Twix, Mounds, Baby Ruth and decided that I couldn't be left alone in an apartment with a whole batch. It's still summer and I still have no will power. Raisinets seemed like a good compromise. I went to my local Fairway to find chocolate and raisins but they didn't have any dark raisins! They had golden raisins and some funky raisin I had never heard of but I didn't want to risk it. I wound up getting dried cranberries.

With two ingredients I couldn't possibly fail but in the end, I have a large clump of chocolate covered cranberries. They are delicious but I didn't managed to get individual pieces. I'm not sure if that's even possible without hours of work (or maybe some technique) but they do taste like Raisinets and I melted the chocolate with ease. Any excuse to bust out my $5 green 1970's double boiler!

and this is where I gave up shredding the chocolate and threw the whole chunk in the boiler

Kit(ty) Kat Bars

Posted by - Nancy

Let's kick this off. I know I posted that I was going to make Twix bars for this months challenge, however my little birthday boy wanted some Kitty Kat bars. Didja get that? KitTY Kats!

After a quick search I found that pretty much all the recipes Google comes up with are the exact same. So, here is the basic recipe for homemade Kit Kat from Serious Eats:

75 Club Crackers
2 sticks of butter
2 cups of graham cracker crumbs
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup butterscotch chips

Procedure:
Lay 25 crackers in a 9x13 pan. Melt butter in a saucepan and stir in graham cracker crumbs, sugars, and milk. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes while stirring constantly. Remove pan from heat. Pour half of butter mixture over crackers in pan. Smooth surface with spatula. Arrange another layer of Club crackers over butter mixture. Pour remaining butter mixture over surface. Smooth surface with spatula. Arrange a third layer of crackers over top. Combine peanut butter, chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips in small saucepan. Melt over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. Spread evenly over crackers. Cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate two hours. Cut into 2-inch bars. Bars will keep for two weeks, stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Okay, so for the first time ever I had all of the ingredients on hand for this. I was excited to get them made. But alas, I have two children, neither of whom sleeps at the same time (except for at night), and since my son is my sous chef if I bake during the day, and this recipe is all on the stove, I had to wait for after bed time to make these.

So Friday night I set out to whip these up. I assembled all of the ingredients and realized I had run out of milk. All I had was one Horizon chocolate milk box (although sitting here now I remembered I have some packages of powdered milk in the back of my pantry). Anyway, I figured Kit Kats are chocolatey and you put chocolate on top of them, so I went for it.





And the final product






And they taste......okay. Not spectacular, and honestly, if I were to close my eyes and try them, I would have trouble placing them as Kit Kats. First, the crackers get a bit soggy so they lack that crisp crunch. Second, the butterscotch chips throw the flavor off. And third, the graham cracker crumbs kind of overwhelm the whole thing. I also would hesitate to make these again because it makes a huge pan.

Oh, and my picky eater wouldn't eat them because they weren't real "kitty kat" bars. Oh well.

August Challenge: Homemade Candy Bars

Posted by -Nancy

Good morning and happy August! I hope it's not too hot where you are, unlike here in Texas where it's a balmy 105 most days. :P
So why not beat the heat with a delicious candy bar? Okay, so maybe it won't beat the heat, but it's still a lot of fun to make!

What!? Make a candy bar?

Yep. This month's challenge is homemade candy bars!

How about a delicious Snickers Bar?










Or a yummy Kit Kat?







Try a Milky Way























Or a Twix































As you can see, there are a lot of choices out there. These are just a sampling of what I found. So search for your favorite and get baking!

We will be making Twix bars since my little man is turning 3 this month and they are his favorite!

July Roundup

Crackers!

July turned out to be one HOT month! Here in New York, we were over 100 degrees as was the rest of the country. I didn't turn my oven on the whole month.

Thanks to Dorrie, Colleen & Michele for your crackers! I'm glad they came out well. They look delicious.

Nancy is jumping in for the next challenge. I'm so excited about this one!

Cheese Crackers

Posted by - colleen

I finally made my crackers! I found this recipe on MyRecipes. They were delicious! I made a few tweaks-I used a Mexican 4-cheese blend instead of cheddar jack. I used whole wheat flour and Splenda sugar. The dough was not easy to roll out but I decided to just roll it the best I could and then used the pizza cutter to separate them. The shapes were not perfect but the taste made up for it. These would be perfect to bake up with some homemade soup for dinner over the winter. They were a little spicy with the red pepper and just the right amount of cheese. I would totally make these again!

Easy Cheesy Crackers

Posted by - Dorrie

This week, while contemplating what to bring to a play group get together for snack, I remembered that this month's Have the Cake challenge is crackers. Why not kill two birds with one stone?

I searched the internet for a recipe for cheddar cheese crackers and happened upon one that was on several different websites/blogs. It sounded magnificently easy and tasty.

Fortunately for me, I already had my camera in the kitchen because that morning I had mistakenly let Henry try eating yogurt out of a bowl with a spoon. As you can see, very little made it actually into his mouth, but I think he's learning about the whole "spoon" thing...

Henry and the strawberry yogurt

Cheddar Cheese Crackers

1 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp white ground pepper (optional)

4 Tblsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

8 ounces grated cheddar cheese

3-4 tsp water

Pulse the flour, salt and pepper, then add butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add grated cheese a little at a time until the mixture again resembles coarse meal.

Cracker dough in the food processor

Pulse in 3 to 4 tablespoons of water, one tablespoon at a time, and only enough so that the dough forms a ball and rides the blade.

Remove, wrap in plastic, and chill in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or up to 24 hours. Roll the dough out to 1/8th-inch thickness directly onto a baking sheet. I used biscuit cutters to cut out mine, but the recipe recommends using a knife or pizza cutter to cut all of the dough into 1 inch squares.

Cutting out the crackers

Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until the crackers are golden brown.

Finished crackers

I doubled the recipe thinking that it wouldn't make very many from one batch, but as it turns out maybe 60 crackers was a bit much...

These were great crackers, right out of the oven. But they became pretty moist and "biscuity" the next day. The lack of our usual dry Colorado weather has something to do with that I think, as we are current in our "monsoon weeks" with a thunderstorm occurring every afternoon. They might store better next time, but I think if I make these again I might take the time to bake them the day that I serve them.

Blue Cheese Almond Wafers

Posted by - Michele

This month’s Have the Cake challenge was cheese crackers. Alot of people like Cheez Its. I am not one of those people. Well, I don’t really dislike them, but I don’t go crazy over them. I decided to go with this recipe made with blue cheese because I knew I had to like them! I found it in Southern Living All-Time Favorite Recipes.

This recipe would go great with a nice soup or stew, or really just a snack. The original title of the recipe was Blue Cheese-Walnut Wafers, but I don’t like walnuts. I decided to use slivered almonds instead. It was so easy to make. And I’m sure you could incorporate any cheese you wanted to. Thank you, Rena, for choosing this yummy challenge! Here is my recipe if you would like to try it!

Blue Cheese Almond Wafers

1 (4oz) package blue cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup finely chopped almonds

1. Process first 3 ingredients in a food processor until smooth, stopping to scrape down sides. (Mixture will be sticky) Spoon mixture into a bowl; stir in almonds. Cover and chill 5 minutes.

2. Divide dough in half. Shape each portion into an 8-inch log. Wrap in heavy-duty plastic wrap; chill 1 hour.

3. Slice dough into 1/4-inch thick slices; place on ungreased baking sheets.

4. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

July Challenge: Cheese Crackers

Cheese crackers are my weakness. I can sit and eat an entire box of cheez-its or better cheddars without an ounce of guilt. Ok, that part about the guilt is not true. As we all know, a box of crackers from the supermarket can't be all that healthy. I searched around and found a great post on The Kitchn with an easy recipe. If you can't have cheese or don't like cheese, feel free to make another kind of cracker.

Now get crackerin'!
Oh god, that was so cheesy. :)