Homemade Cheese-Its

I’m always looking for healthy snack alternatives to those processed junk foods you find in the store that kids love so much, especially mine! Whether it’s a healthier brand or a recipe, I’m ready to upgrade. So, when I came across a Homemade Cheese-Its recipe on Pinterest, I was excited to give them a try. Don’t they look good?

Here’s the original Homemade Cheese-Its recipe from goldenafternoon. She has some great step-by-step pictures there so be sure to check them out. I had to tweak the recipe but after about 4 batches and a new rolling pin, I think I’ve perfected it to my tastes (I’m sure it’s perfect for others as-is) and it’s a keeper! Here’s my version of the recipe.

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Homemade Cheese-Its

Ingredients

• 8 oz Mexican shredded cheese you can also use sharp cheddar
• ½ stick unsalted butter room temperature
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 1 c flour
• 2 T milk

Instructions

1. Cream the cheese, butter, and salt until combined. Add the flour until it looks like the above. Then, slowly add the water until the dough forms a ball. It may take 15 seconds or so for the dough to make the ball after you add the water so be careful not to add much more (I added a Tbsp more).

2. Roll out the dough until it’s 1/8 of an inch.

3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
4. Cut them in 1″ squares. You can see by the lines that i let my kids help cut them out. They LOVED the pastry wheel.
5. Poke a hole in them with a chopstick and bake for 12 minutes.

Recipe Notes

If you want them crispy, roll them FLAT. Like REALLY flat! Roll it out even less than 1/8” otherwise they’ll be a bit chewy. Which is fine warm but once they cool off, but they’re not as good. So do a test batch!

If you want them crispy, roll them FLAT. Like REALLY flat! Roll it out even less than 1/8” otherwise they’ll be a bit chewy. Which is fine warm but once they cool off, but they’re not as good. So do a test batch!

As agoldenafternoon pointed out, this would be a GREAT recipe to make with kids. I have no doubt that my girls would have LOVED to use a rolling pin to flatten the dough out, cut crooked lines using a pastry wheel and poke uncentered holes with a chopstick. Because, let me tell ya, poking those holes are a PERFECT activity for little hands, especially since bigger hands get bored and tired after just a few!

Even MORE PERFECT would have been using those little hands to move what seemed like thousands of cheese its at the time, over to the cookie sheet. It’s such a shame that each time I made these (like 4 different times!!), the girls were too busy playing outside or too pre-occupied in their magical pretend world of play or not home at all to help me out. Oh well, one of these days we WILL make these together and they’re gonna love it dang it!! Anyway, here’s what my cheese-its looked like pre-bake.

And as I mentioned earlier, I had to buy a new rolling pin. My old one was one of those one piece, fatter in the middle rolling pins that just angered me the more and more I used it as it rarely left me with a nice flat, even surface. Not sure WHY anyone ever even bothered to design such a rolling pin! Ok, I’m sure there’s a specific use for this kind of rolling pin but it just isn’t for me so I finally broke down and bought myself this beauty! Smooth and evenly flat across the pin. Yeah! Ain’t she grand?!?

Update 9/10/13: Just made another batch and here’s a picture of them right out of the oven. Yum!

And here’s the final product! Pretty cool, huh? Tested them out on the girls and a bunch of neighborhood kids and they seemed to be a hit! They were quite taken with the fact that they were HOMEMADE!

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Christine, aka happyvballgirl : )

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