This is the second Thursday of Baking the Baking Pantry theme. This means that I am using up some of my lesser-used ingredients.
Because I was hosting for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the little voice inside my head ensured I purchased enough crackers for the events. Even though my sister is gluten-free. The other voice inside my head said that I could never only buy one box if they were BOGO (buy one, get one). Twice.
We have a lot of crackers.
Normally, I keep at least one box in reserve in case I make pimiento cheese for a work event.
Yeah, we have four boxes that were unopened and 1 box that was only missing 2 sleeves. One sleeve for each night of the festivities, you know.
And the best Christmas crack crackers to use are Ritz crackers. I know because I’ve tried saltines, Ritz, matzoh, club crackers, digestive, and graham crackers. There is just something about the butteriness of the Ritz that puts the rest of them to shame.
But, of course, I wanted to do a little experiment. I made a ring of unbroken crackers around the cookie sheet, duly lined with parchment paper, and I crushed a sleeve of crackers to fill the center. The ring itself took half a sleeve.
What? I wanted to see what would happen.
I theorized that the caramel would make even a crushed cracker more interesting and the bigger surface area would make it adhere more.
I was half right.
Okay, three quarters.
Yes, the crushed cracker and the caramel interaction was interesting. And weirdly even more buttery.
Yes, the bigger surface area of the crushed cracker edges did make the caramel adhere more.
No, it didn’t adhere quite like I was picturing.
Not a total failure. I must increase the amount of caramel to account for the increased amount of edges.
I give myself a B. With the caveat to try again with more caramel.
Also, I used milk chocolate in the beginning over half of it and it refused to spread evenly while melted. Semi-sweet is the way to go here.
After all, Cookie Thursday is a Thing is all about experimentation.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 