Black Sesame Cheese Crackers
Black Sesame Cheese Crackers
an easy make ahead snack for school or cocktail hour
Cleaning out the chest freezer in the basement has been on my To Do list for a while. It’s usually where the fruits of my overzealous farm stand shopping get tucked away during the summer, and serves as overflow for when the kitchen freezer is too full. From the looks of things, you’d never believe only two people live in this house, plus a cat and dog.
This squirreling away of food is a trait inherited from my family, except they had good reason for the behavior. My nana was a single mother of four in the 50s and 60s. She knew how to stretch food so there was always just enough but this stuck with my mother, aunts and uncle, translating into basements filled with enough food that would get you through the apocalypse, provided you had a can opener and camping stove.
In my case, it’s the desire to elongate the harvest season that always finds me in this situation every late spring. Now just as strawberries are flooding the farm stands, it’s time for me to furiously use up the berries, of all varieties, that I stockpiled to make smoothies, pies, and jam. Same goes for tomatoes—there’s enough in the basement freezer to make at least a dozen pints of sauce. I was particularly tired and short on time last summer, and stored more in the freezer than usual.
Turns out I also never need to buy another ice pack, although it means I’m very prepared to keep perishable groceries cool during summer supermarket runs.
Tucked away in between the frozen fruit, vegetables, ice packs and ice cream base, I also found a rather large bag of black sesame seeds. I must’ve opened it to fill the jar in the freezer, then tucked it away and forgot. They stayed on my mind for days, thinking of all the things I could do with my newfound stash. This coincided with a need to replenish my cracker supply for snacks and aperitivo hour, so I decided to revisit my recipe for homemade cheese crackers from Homemade with Love.
The recipe is mostly the same except I halved it, and made a few tweaks, including adding some of those black sesame seeds. Instead of rolling out the dough and cutting it into little squares, I formed it into logs and gave them a quick chill in the freezer just until firm enough to slice but not frozen or the slices will crumble, about 30 minutes. You can achieve the same with a few hours in the fridge, if you’re not short on time.
For an even thinner cracker, which is how Virginia likes them, you can use a mandoline to shave paper thin slices. I recommend preparing them both ways to see which you like best. The crackers in the photo or hand cut on the thicker side, around ⅛-inch.
Next up is thawing out those tomatoes to replenish the dwindling sauce stash in the basement.—xo, j.
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