Torie's "Cheeze-Its"
Admit it, we have all had these cheesy childhood favorite snacks at some point in out lives right? Unfortunately, normal Cheeze-Its are POISON, so I sure hope you are not giving them to your children, or eating them yourselves.
I did my best to use this Simple Mills cracker healthy recipe as base (because they are BOMB, you should try them) and come up with my own version you can make at home. They are obviously not the same consistency of a normal, toxic, Cheeze-Its but they are dang good!
Why are they bad? They contain the following toxic ingredients:
yellow food dye # 5 and yellow #6 are both cancer causing and banned worldwide (not US)
GMO dairy and corn ingredients
food additive TBHQ is a very toxic petroleum product similar to butane which is known to causes abnormal reactions in the immune system that trigger food allergies ( just google it and its scary how toxic it is)
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups organic grass fed cheddar cheese, grated by hand (Trader Joes & Costco have great selections)
- 1 tablespoon arrowroot powder (seen note below)
- 2 cups Almond Flour
- 1 teaspoons paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- 1/2 teaspoon granulated onion
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon celery salt
- 2 large pasture raised eggs
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Method
Preheat oven to 350 and place the rack into the middle position. Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the dimensions of your sheet pan.
Grate the cheese and whisk eggs into the cheese, add olive oil. (all wet ingredients)
Measure the dry ingredients and mix them into a separate bowl, until you break up all the lumps.
Add the dry ingredients with wet until you get a ball of of dough.
Place the parchment on the counter with the ball of dough on top (see picture above). Put another piece of parchment paper that you spray with oil on top (oil side down) and then start to flatten the dough slightly with your hands.
Roll it as thin as you can, you might have to move the paper in place again.
Cut any dough that goes beyond the parchment and patch it to areas that need more. Continue until the dough is even in thickness and just about to the edges of all sides of the parchment.
With a sharp knife or a pizza cutter, cut a neat edge around the perimeter of the dough, save the extra bits to make a big cracker (see pic above)
Then, proceed to cut the dough into 1 inch columns and rows, I am not very into perfect things but you can use a ruler if you are into that.
Bake for 15-18 minutes. Remove and let cool for 5 minutes. Carefully break up the crackers using a knife then spread them back onto the pan. You will put them back in the oven for about 5 more minutes then let them cool.
Store in a glass airtight container in the refrigerator.
Arrowroot is a great natural thickening agent that comes from a plant, an alternative to cornstarch that has been used for over 7,000 years! Most cornstarch is derived from GMO corn, so I recommend to stay away. Arrowroot actually contains a variety of B vitamins as well as minerals such as copper and iron, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus and zinc.
You can use arrowroot on your baked sweet potatoes to make them crunchy, or in desserts (they help make almond and coco flour fluffy) or even in soups and stews to give it a heartier texture.