Peanut-butter snack crackers

Been practising some more recipes for the Live Below the Line challenge next week. I’m not a big fan of breakfast early in the morning, nor am I one of nature’s early birds. I generally get up in time to wash and dress myself, and don’t feel hungry for breakfast until I am already sitting at my desk at work. Usually I have some almonds with my coffee, but almonds are beyond my budget next week (as is coffee!), so I’ve been thinking about what I could bring to eat instead. I don’t actually dislike plain cornflakes as a snack but I think I’d get some strange looks if I started snacking on them in public. These crackers might be a bit more acceptable.

Ingredients:

120g self-raising flour (3.6p) – plus some for dusting which I didn’t measure, so let’s round it up to 4p

60g chunky peanut butter(10.9p)

5g mustard (0.6p) – I would put more in next time as you can’t really taste it.

pinch salt – (0.1p)

water as needed.

method:

Preheat oven to 180c (350f/gas4)

Put mixing bowl on scales. Pour in flour. Zero scales and spoon in peanut butter (will be a couple of spoonfuls). Add a teaspoon or two of mustard, depending on how much you like the flavour of mustard.

Remove bowl from scale. Add a pinch of salt. Cut the peanut butter and mustard into the flour as if it is fat and you’re making pastry. When it seems fairly well distributed and the mixture is a bit pebbly, start adding splashes of water, still cutting in with the knife. Carry on adding water a bit at a time until the mixture will stay together when pinched. Knead for a few seconds to make a soft ball of dough.

Get a baking sheet and put a couple of spoonfuls of flour in and spread it so it covers the base, to stop the crackers sticking.

Flour a clean, flat surface and place the dough onto it. Flour the top of the dough and start rolling out. The chunks of peanut will prevent the dough from rolling very thin the first go around but tend to start breaking down when the scraps are re-formed for the second roll out. Roll the dough out fairly thin, maybe 3-4 mm? Cut out into cracker shapes and dock with a fork to stop air bubbles from making them puff up too much.

Bake for around 18-20 minutes (less if they are thinner – check them after 12 minutes to make sure they don’t look like they’re scorching).

This recipe made 20 crackers with a scrap of dough left for under 16p. They have around a gram of protein per cracker (I should be getting around 50g in a day) plus a decent amount of calcium and iron thanks to the fortified flour, they average out to about 32 calories per cracker, and they’re pretty tasty. I think they will be very nice spread with some split pea hummus as well, maybe topped with a bit of red cabbage and some pickled onion for snacks other than breakfast.