Once a month, we've started hosting a film night at Austin Forum. It's great because it means I get to work but also chill out for a couple of hours watching a film. We normally have a discussion afterwards and we provide pop corn and some sort of fizzy drink.
I can't watch films without snacking. I need pop corn or chocolate or something to nibble on, especially if I'm having a lazy day. But then we don't keep a lot of savoury snacks in our house. For a while we would buy Pringles every time we did our shopping but then we decided that we were getting too dependent on them so we stopped buying them. We have a lot of chocolate, either from when we've bought a big bar or if people have given us chocolate gifts (if you're wondering, we like Roses, Quality Street, Celebrations, Thornton's, Milk Tray, After Eights....). Sometimes you just want something savoury that isn't going to get sickly after 2 or three bites. Something more-ish.
Crackers are a great solution to this. On their own or spread with butter or with a square of cheese on top, crackers are a good satisfying snack. I love crackers. Do you know what some of the best ones are? Can you guess? I'll tell you: Mini Cheddars. What an invention! Mini cheddars are bite-sized crackers already cheese flavoured so you can just open a packet and enjoy the cheesey, savoury goodness with out the faff of cutting, grating and spreading.
But what's really fun? Making your own..
Megan's mini cheddar flavoured bicuits
100g plain flour + extra for dusting
100g cold, diced butter
100g cheddar cheese - as strong as you like, grated finely
Pinch of salt
As you can see, the ingredients make it look so easy. And it is! Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Rub the flour and butter together with your fingers until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the cheese and use your hands to mix it in well.
Use your hands to press the mixture into a soft dough and make it into a ball. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it in the fridge for half an hour to firm up a bit so that you can work it without the butter melting.
Dust a worktop with flour and preheat your oven to 200 degrees C. Line a baking sheet or two with greaseproof paper. Roll out the biscuit dough until it is about 0.5cm thick. Use a small sized biscuit cutter to cut the rounds out of the dough - mine was about 4 or 5cm in diameter.
Put the biscuits on the tray and leave a couple of millimeters' gap because they will spread ever so slightly. Put the tray(s) in the oven for 10 minutes until the biscuits are lightly golden.
Leave the tray to cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes so the the base of the crackers hardens then transfer the crackers to the wire rack to finish cooling. If you have more cut crackers to bake then do those. I only have one tray so the dough made three batches of crackers.
Save for the next day in an air tight box or serve them with a good film and a glass of white wine. Incidentally they will also go very nicely with an aperitivo.