Browsing the archives for the crackers tag.

Vegan ‘Goldfish’ Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)

Healthy

Ok so, as you are all painfully aware by now, I’m the biggest fan girl there ever was for Peas and Thank You and for Mama Pea’s cookbook. I will have to tally it up but I think I have made almost all of the recipes now. However, since Mama Pea (aka Sarah Matheny), is someone I really admire and look up to, there is no way I’m posting the details to her recipes – you’ll just have to buy her book. So all year long, I have been posting pretty pictures of my attempts at her recipes and my thoughts on them and how many of our littles liked them and that sort of thing.

However.

The recipe for these crackers is available on her blog, (in the reci’peas’ section har har). So I can post this recipe and encourage you to visit her blog and it’s win-win! We all loved these – and so did our neighbors!

Before I do that though, take a look at some of the recipes I’ve made from her book recently!


These cupcakes have enough sweetness to them to easily be called a cupcake – but they are healthier than your average muffins! 2/3 of my kids loved these and to be fair the one that didn’t isn’t big on jam. I will try these again as Peanut Butter Cupcakes and see what happens. They come together pretty quickly too!

I know, I know. ‘Mama Pea’s Balls’. Whatever. You’re the one with your head in the gutter.

These cupcakes have enough sweetness to them to easily be called a cupcake – but they are healthier than your average muffins! 2/3 of my kids loved these and to be fair the one that didn’t isn’t big on jam. I will try these again as Peanut Butter Cupcakes and see what happens. They come together pretty quickly too!

Ok, so moving along. No, these do not taste just like a goldfish cracker, because vegan cheese doesn’t taste like cheese. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t amazing! I love these! I love them with soup or alone or dipped in whatever I’m dipping veggies in at any given moment.

Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)

1 cup all purpose gluten free flour
1 cup garbanzo bean flour
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1 cup non dairy cheese
1/2 cup vegan margarine
5 tablespoons cold water

Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)
Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)
First process both flours, the xanthan gum, salt and mustard. Then add the vegan cheese and pulse. Add the vegan cheese and pulse till it’s all mixed. Now add the vegan marg in chunks and pulse till that is all mixed as well.
Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)
Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)
Dump this mixture into a bigger bowl and slowly add the cold water while stirring. Eventually, it’ll hold itself together.
Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)
Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)
Once you can make a loaf out of it, wrap it in plastic wrap and pop it in the first for about an hour (or more). Theeeeen, preheat your oven to 350 and roll out your chilled dough on a floured surface and cut out shapes (or if your cookie cutters happen to be, oh I don’t know, say 4200km away – that’s 2600 miles, people, you can just use a knife and cut little squares out of them). Then bake them for 10-14 minutes. The kids totally demolished them when they came out of the oven.
Vegan 'Goldfish' Crackers (Thank you Mama Pea)
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Homemade Goldfish Crackers

Domestic, Kids

They don’t look like fishies, but they taste pretty bang on!! I was going to follow the little homemade goldfish cookie cutter tutorial on the post with the recipe, but I just moved about a million miles and don’t have kitchen scissors yet! I know, I know, it’s total insanity. It really is, I’m forever saying ‘why didn’t I bring that?!?.

The recipe itself is very simple and as long as you have a food processor you’re totally set. You have to pop the dough in the fridge for a while so it’s easier to work with, and then of course you’re rolling it out and cutting it, but it’s absolutely worth it. Any time you make a snack from scratch yourself it’s worth it because you know what’s in it!

Homemade Goldfish Crackers

Homemade ‘Goldfish’ Crackers – via Miss Anthropist’s Kitchen

1 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoon cold unsalted butter
8 ounces grated cheddar cheese
3/4 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder

Homemade Goldfish Crackers
Homemade Goldfish Crackers
So simple – first process the flour,onion powder, salt, pepper, and baking powder. Then add the butter and cheese.
Homemade Goldfish Crackers
Homemade Goldfish Crackers
It’ll look doughy and hold together. Now wrap it and chill it for a while.
Homemade Goldfish Crackers
Homemade Goldfish Crackers
Flour your surface and roll it out! Cut whatever shapes you want, just make them small and mostly uniform so they bake the same.
Homemade Goldfish Crackers
Yes, I used a water bottle lid. Ahem. 10 minutes at 350 did the trick for me! So good!
Homemade Goldfish Crackers
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One Anniversary and Back to Back Birthdays

Crafty, Domestic

My parents celebrated their 30th anniversary a few weeks ago, I had a few silly ideas for the pearl anniversary that involved patterns with lots of ‘purls’ in them but nothing seemed quite right. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you know how much I love knitting creatures and toys so I just went with knitting pearls, 30 of them!

I didn’t intend for either of them to actually wear them, I assumed they’d put them where ever they put all the other random knitted stuff they have from me. I’ve been told that when held up and dangling, this looks like a string of garlic. As far as I know my folks don’t believe in vampires…

On to the recap portion of this recap post, so much has happened – both crafty and otherwise – since my Valentines Day Rewind post a few weeks ago. First, we had a (sort of) surprise party for our dear friend Andrew, then another birthday party for our dear friend Talea, and then I finally gave birth to wee one #3 and we had a little welcome to the world party for her. Many, many things were knitted, and many, many things were baked (and cooked) since then.

A bunch of my friends are turning 29 this year, myself included, and Andrew was the first. So we started planning his fete as a surprise – which isn’t how it ended up at all, unless you ask wee one #2, she’s certain he had no idea. She hid under the dining room table and jumped out at him yelling ‘suuuuuurprise!!’ 😛

Food themes for tonight (aside from 102 Warhead sour candies) were cheese and chocolate – two of our favorite things as a collective. The cheddar crackers are from a recipe my Dad and I put together last summer with not much else to do one afternoon. Every time I make them they’re a little different, sometimes I switch up the cheese, sometimes I add onion or chives. This version is made with cheddar and has diced onions. The cheese souffles were also made with cheddar, and borderlined just enough on being quiche-like that both those who love and hate quiche loved these babies.

 

The actual surprise of the evening was the cake Gill had made for him. We Photoshopped Andrew’s head on to Burt Reynolds’ very naked body (very naked body on a bear skin rug!), and had that put on an ice cream cake. To keep him from discovering, or even asking about his cake, we made a decoy. Wee one #2 and I made a banana chocolate chip cake and she painstakingly put on each of these chocolate chips herself, one at a time.

 

This week’s pie of the week was a tray of chocolate cinnamon tarts. My resident pie fanatic assured me that as mini pies, tarts count! The crust is my usual pie crust, minus 1/4 cup of flour for 1/4 cup of cocoa and a bit of milk instead of water. The filling is essentially scratch chocolate pudding with 1 tsp of cinnamon, topped with fresh whipped cream and a chocolate chip, naturally! Wee one #1 crushed some Oreos for me so we could make Oreo fudge. Fudge used to be such a mystery to me and now I can hardly believe how simple it is to make!

 

On to his gift, his gloriously unfinished gift! I’m knitting him up a pair of Skull Socks of Fury from Hello Yarn! I made him the Pirate Mittens from the same site for Christmas, so I’m keeping with the theme. The pattern in these socks is pretty simple to follow, it’s just the time consuming factor of knitting socks for men and their giant feet. 😛

I love how big the skull is on this little guy, clearly he has an overactive brain.

So now, fast forward one week, I’d been having contractions here and there and it was making it tricky for even me to get things done. Talea’s 26th birthday landed on the Saturday, the day *after* my official due date with wee one #3. I had so many fun ideas for her birthday party, and I wont list all the neat things I didn’t do this year because I’ll just do them next year when she’s 27! 😛

I did manage to get some fun things done for her birthday fete though! Talea is my pie fanatic, the reason I vowed to make a pie a week for at least a year (this week’s potato/cheese/chive pie was week 13), and she is my one and only sock knitting protege. So really, it wouldn’t make sense to not use the themes of sock knitting and pie. Naturally, from one sock knitter to another, my first thought was to make heaps of teeny tiny socks and litter the table with them.

 

This actually lead to knitting baby socks, (which consumed the rest of my week – more on that later), so I casted on again to make really, really wee socks and left them partly unfinished with toothpicks in them as wee double pointed needles! I also knit up a chocolate-raspberry tart for her! My husband machine thought the wee socks and ‘needles’ were cute but they needed a knitting basket for the wee balls of yarn they were being knitted from so he made me some origami boxes!

The wee ones wanted to get in on the crafting action, of course, so they made some tissue paper flowers for her! Her fiancee totally showed them up by having 26 red roses delivered here that night to surprise her! Ha!

I’m not posting photos of this week’s pie because it was sort of blah and I’m not happy with the crust. I cut balloons out of the crust, but it just wasn’t what I was aiming for. It was yummy though – Potato Cheese and Chive! I will post a photo of the birthday gal’s treats! I got her Lorna’s Laces sock yarn and Gill and Andrew got her a huge goblet and a bottle of her fave wine. What I loved most about this gathering was how quickly the addition of a few hanks of yarn turned it into a yarn winding party!

At Talea’s birthday fete I had two pretty serious contractions, enough to make me think that wee one #3 may actually join us that weekend – I wasn’t far off. I spent the rest of the weekend knitting wee socks for her, keeping my fingers crossed that she was a girl as the tech had said she was (the husband machine and I were having a really hard time coming up with a boy name), and hoping to meet her soon. Monday night (one week ago tonight) she was born…here she is:

And here is one of the many pairs of socks I made for her last weekend while we were all waiting for her to be ready to come out!

I’ll leave you to chew on that for now and post again about the Welcome to the World gathering we had on Friday…with the most delicious pie there ever was.

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Parade of Finished Objects ’08 Edition

Crafty, Domestic

Before I get into showing off some neat stuff I made, I have to show off a couple of neat things my dear friends made and gave to me. Talea made me a knitted apron. This is exactly the kind of kitsch I adore the most, and since picking up stitches is the bane of her existence, receiving this made me feel super special!

knitted apron

I also think this deserves a couple of detail shots. My giant 8 month pregnant tummy in the first shot doesn’t really do it justice. Pink is hands down my fave colour, and in my (not so humble) opinion brown is the best compliment to it. Also, how cute is the wee white ruffle on the edge?! Love this, though I am a little terrified to get it dirty and actually wash it, I will because that’s why she made it. Thanks Talea!

knitted apron detail

Another handmade gift that totally killed me this year I got from Brigitte. I’ve wanted to sew like her since high school when she’d whip up a new flawless dress for herself before a party, alas I am not there yet. She, along with everyone else who has ever seen it, is both taken aback and enthralled with my 70s kitchen. I used to hate it, but I’m learning to embrace it, and it really does look fab in food photos.

70s apron

Here we go, my stylin 70s apron, if I could marry it, I would. I love that it’s constructed in such a way that I can just tuck it up and wear it over my baby belly!

I was going over the list of stuff I want to make this year and was thinking about all the rad gear and treats I made last year when I wasn’t blogging. So many snazzy little treasures only seen by a handful of people. The handful that got to see them are a fantastic group mind you, but I figured this was my last chance to post these pics before the parade of ’09 begins. I’ve already knocked off 2 pairs of socks and I’m 1/3 of the way through my second pirate mitten. They are not at all in order, more like the order I thought of them (influenced heavily by the order in which I found the photos).

birthday cake

(l-r): Tanisha/May Birthday Cake, 101 Designer One Skein Wonders Herringbone Scarf

Tanisha and I are just a couple of weeks apart so we usually celebrate our birthdays together. The cake is layered chocolate and vanilla, just like us! The scarf was for a BFF’s brother’s Christmas gift this year, last year I gave him a few hundred Rocket candies and he was much less impressed than I had hoped. He loved this scarf though, thankfully!

star trek next generation

Chris’ Star Trek: The Next Generation Peeps

Another Christmas gift here, this is some of the bridge crew of ST Next Gen, which we both grew up with and both still adore (maybe a little too much). Jordi’s visor was the biggest pain in the butt. I got the pattern from Kimberly Chapman‘s site.

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