Friday, October 10, 2008

Gluten-Free Crackers with the Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen


Sea at the Book of Yum is once again hosting the Adopt-a-gluten-free-blogger event she founded and this time around it has a lunchbox theme. I had bookmarked a recipe for chickpea crackers on Susan's Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen blog for a long time now and this seemed like the perfect excuse to assemble the ingredients and bake some up.

Susan's blog is not not exclusively gluten-free, but she has a wide range of gluten-free recipes noted in the left-hand sidebar of her well-designed blog, from Kidney Beans in Curry Sauce to Cherry-Chocolate Mousse Pie. She's a Mississippi resident whose popular blog provides a wealth of healthy, low-fat or fat-free vegan meal ideas that are perfect for planning meatless menus. Her photography is impeccable and every recipe typically gets added to my heap of TBC (To Be Cooked) bookmarks folder. Even if you are not vegan or vegetarian you are sure to be tempted by many of these delicious recipes.

I had never tried making crackers, gluten-free or otherwise, but Susan's post inspired me to grab another bag of chickpea flour and nutritional yeast from my local health food store and cook up some of these wafers. While Dan has appreciated having the almond-based Nut Thins crackers for a safe snack cracker, he was hankering for some variety in CRISPY edibles, so I took on this project.

Cracker making was surprisingly easy. I had thought that rolling out the cracker dough to 1/8 inch thickness would be a feat, but the dough worked well as long as I kept sprinkling white rice flour on my counter and rolling pin. If anything, I think I made some of the crackers too thin and they and their smoked paprika topping came just shy of being overdone. I used a one-inch wide heart-shaped cookie cutter to make the crackers, but as Susan notes in her recipe, you could even more easily cut them into squares.

We paired our crackers with hummus and cheese and they were a welcome addition to our gluten-free recipe file. Thank you Susan! And thanks to Sea for this fun blog event which always inspires me to break out of the weekly recipe rut and try something new.

Be sure to check out the Lunchbox Roundup at the Book of Yum after October 13th, when this Adopt-a-gluten-free-blogger round ends for some more portable food ideas. Gluten-free, of course!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ha! I have a to make file, too.
these sound super yummy, and the daring bakers made crackers last month, so there are a bunch of GF varieties out there. I like your idea of smoked paprika!

Susan Voisin said...

I'm so glad you liked the crackers! I haven't made them in a long time, but I think I may have to give them a try again. Low-fat, gluten-free crackers are so expensive to buy lately.