Plastic-Free Ritz Crackers

It Starts With Me…  Co-op owner blog share

Back when my kids went to school (we’re homeschooling this year), my son always wanted me to buy him Lunchables (ummm… no way…. besides being nutritional crap… they’re way over packaged).  To give him what he wanted without giving into crap food…. I invested in a LapTop lunch** and would buy all the “ingredients” for my son to make his own “Lunchable”…including “Ritz-type” crackers…. my kids just LOVE those buttery crackers.  Now that I’m really striving to avoid plastics whenever I can… I haven’t bought them in a LONG time.

**If I wanted to purchase this today, I wouldn’t… unfortunately, LapTop lunches are made from plastic 🙁   I would, instead, purchase the stainless steel PlanetBox.

Soooo… you can imagine my excitement (and my kids excitement) when on Thursday, one of my favorite blogs to drool over– The Cupcake Project— posted a recipe for Homemade Ritz Crackers!!!!!!  Obviously, we made them…

Plastic-Free Ritz Crackers

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 tbsp cold unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water

Topping:

• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Put the flour, baking powder, sugar, and 1/2 tsp of salt in the food processor and pulse to combine.
3. Add cold butter. Pulse to combine.
4. Add vegetable oil.  Pulse to combine.
5. Add water a bit at a time.  Pulse, until the dough begins to form a ball.
6. Roll dough out as thin as you can.  The thinner they are the more crisp and cracker like they are.
7. Use cookie cutters (or a ruler and knife) to cut the dough out.   Make whatever shape you like.

>> After rolling and cutting the crackers, I was left with a good amount of dough… I rerolled it all to see if the crackers would be as good as the first rolled batch… and they ARE!!!  🙂  So reroll the dough scraps!!! <<

8.  Poke holes in the dough.  We used a fork.