Homemade Cheese Crackers are miles better than the box
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Homemade cheese crackers are the most poppable tasty snack maybe ever rich with flaky buttery goodness and pure cheese flavor. I use Cheddar, but really, your choice of cheese are endless.
It’s not uncommon for my younger baking students (1st-5th grade) to declare each week that, “This is the best thing we’ve ever made,” but with these crackers, I think they might truly mean it. These crackers are definitely high on the list of things my dog would sell her soul for along with Czech beef goulash and pot roast.
Whether or not you believe kids or a rather pampered dog, it’s hard to argue with the fact that these are quick to make, delicious to eat, and a perfect little snack or addition to a lunch or charcuterie board. With baseball season approaching, I’m planning to make several batches to freeze so that my boys have a fast high protein snack they can pack in their bags for games that fall in awkward times of the day.
Raid your fridge for cheese–let’s make some cheesy little nibbles.
Homemade cheese crackers
Why these crackers will have you skipping the box
- No weird ingredients: When you make your own snacks, you control the quality of everything. With better cheese and real butter, these crackers are not that junky at the end of the day.
- Pick your cheese: Good cheese is really really good, and a good aged Cheddar, Manchego, Parmesan, Gouda…they’re all good here. My Dad is a huge fan of blue cheese and I often make him cheese baskets for gifts; next go around, I’m tucking a blue cheese version of these crackers in there!
- Saving money: If you make a cheese cracker with a good cheese, I promise you too that you’d never be able to buy a box of something equivalent, and if you could, it would be $17 and weigh like 2 ounces. This recipe makes over a pound.
- Fun shapes: In these pictures, I just used a small square cutter here, but these are essentially a savory cutout cookie. As such, you can cut them into anything you want. My squirrel cutter is a favorite with my students. Last year I think we made almost all cheesy squirrels the week we made these crackers, lol.
Ingredients for Homemade Cheese Crackers
- Cheese: anything that you can grate works here.
- All-purpose flour
- Dried dill (optional)
- Paprika: you could also use black pepper, curry powder, or chili powder
- Butter
- Ice water: to moisten the dough
Other cheese you can use besides cheddar for cheese crackers
- Colby
- Monterey Jack
- Parmesan
- Gruyere
- Gouda
- Blue cheese crumbles
- Provolone
- Havarti
- Raclette
- Gloucester
- Pepper Jack
- Manchego
Other seasonings you can use in cheese crackers
You can just about clean out your spice drawer making a batch of these crackers. Shoot I might take my own advice as I look at #2 on this list…
- Old Bay: my kids put this on all the things.
- Ranch seasoning
- Cumin + chipotle powder
- Curry powder
- Black pepper
- Taco seasoning
Homemade Cheese Crackers
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: a little over 1 pound of crackers
Description
Think Cheez-its but a million times better, these cheese crackers are so easy to make and just as snackable without trashy ingredients. Make them anytime you’re looking for a cheesy snack.
Ingredients
- 4 ounces cheddar cheese (113 g)
- 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (195 g)
- 1 Tablespoon dried dill (optional)
- 1 teaspoon paprika (optional)
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper (optional)
- 1 stick butter (113 g), cold from the fridge
- 2 Tablespoons ice water
Instructions
Make the dough
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 C). Line 2 sheet trays with parchment.
- Grate the cheese. If you have a food processor with a grating disc, you can grate the cheese and process the dough in the same bowl.
- Mix the cheese, flour, dill, and paprika in the work bowl of a food processor. Pulse a few times to break up the cheese into smaller pieces.
- Add the butter to the flour mix. Pulse the food processor for a few seconds until the flour is starting to look moist around the edges and the butter is no longer visible.
- Pour over the water and run the machine for a few more seconds. The mixture will be crumbly.
- Lay out 2 long pieces of plastic wrap stuck together. Dump the dough into the middle of the plastic, and then gather the plastic wrap around the dough. Press the dough together, using the wrap to help you.
Fold the dough over on itself a few times, and then press the dough into a disc. Divide the dough into 2 parts. 
Bake the crackers
- Lightly sprinkle a piece of parchment with a little flour. Place one piece of dough in the middle of the parchment. Sprinkle the top of the dough with a little flour and then top it with a second piece of parchment.
- Roll the dough between the parchment into a sheet about 1/8” thick. Cut small crackers from the dough. A small round or square cutter is ideal, but use whatever cookie cutters you have.
- Transfer the cut pieces to the prepared baking sheets. There’s no need to leave a lot of space between crackers.
- Bake the crackers for 10 minutes, turning the sheet around 180 degrees halfway through baking.
- Reroll any scraps of dough from the first batch with the second piece of dough.
- Keep rolling and baking off crackers until you run out of dough.
- These crackers keep for about a week at room temperature in an airtight tin.
Notes
Freezer crackers
If you don’t want to roll out these crackers, freeze a log of the raw dough for baking later. Roll it up into a log that’s about 1” across in diameter and then wrap it well in plastic wrap.
When you’re ready to bake your cheese crackers, let the dough sit on a counter for about 30 minutes. Use a sharp knife to cut thin slices of the dough. Place them on parchment and bake as above.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: about 1 ounce
- Calories: 123
- Sugar: 0.1 g
- Sodium: 47.9 mg
- Fat: 8.2 g
- Carbohydrates: 9.4 g
- Protein: 3 g
- Cholesterol: 22.2 mg
