The center pile are the crackers we liked the best. My son (who can have gluten and dairy, and has had goldfish most recently) says they are pretty close. We will see how cutie-man likes them. The surrounding piles are samples from all the reject batches and/or bake times and temps. I have LOTS of savory crumbs in my crumb container for meatloaf now!
You will see in my photo that I have fish, square, and ducky crackers. The ducks are for my daughter and because the fish cutter I have kept dropping part of the
tail when I cut out the crackers. I searched the net and found this cutter, which I think I have to get some-time, though it is bigger than the fish cutter I have. The fish and duck are from a animal cutter set my mom got for me almost six years ago when we started eating gluten free. She ordered the set from the Miss Roben catalog. I was disappointed to not find this set on their website anymore as they still carry the animal cracker mix, however, I did find it at Kitchen Krafts. They are adorable. Yes, at only 1” you do get a lot of crackers, and, yes, cutting them does seem to go on forever. If you wanted to make “Cheez-it” style crackers instead you could just break out your pizza cutter and make 1” squares very quickly.
I made some of the crackers smile by pressing a spoon edge into the dough and poking an eye into the fish with a toothpick or a fork tine. I mostly wanted to see if the impressions stayed during the baking process. They do, it’s very cute, but so tedious! So, sorry, hon’, until I know if you even can stand the taste, I am NOT making any more smile!
I will be seeing my little buddy on Monday. I will let you all know the verdict. At least my little picky eater likes them. I don’t know if that is saying much as she rejects a lot of flavor combinations everyone else likes. :o)
I think the taste is pretty much there, but I want to try a couple more things on the texture. I think they need to be a bit more “puffy.” I will post the recipe on Wednesday after I bake one or two more batches. I just need to be sure the recipe is down before I post it for you all. Practice makes perfect!
UPDATE: Well, he seemed to like the taste and ate more on his own. My little bud DID seem a surprised at how crunchy they were. I have a couple ideas I am going to work on before Wednesday to get the texture a bit more authentic. (I hope!)
