December 17, 2023

Buttery Vegan Cheese Cracker Recipe

If you want some flakey, melt-in-your-mouth crackers, this vegan cheese cracker recipe is perfect! They’re perfectly tender and have a great, cheese-like tang. Excellent for snacking on straight, they’re also great with a dip or on a snack board. Less than 10 simple ingredients (if you’re vegan you likely already have them all). Eat up!

Please note that I may have been a little confusing in the fact that I shaped my crackers like small fish and whales- they are closer in texture to Cheez-It’s than Goldfish crackers.

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Homemade Snack Food

I don’t like to label foods as good or bad based on nutrition, or even really as healthy or unhealthy. I think there can be a place in your world for any foods you enjoy, and all foods can benefit your physical or mental wellbeing. To clarify, as a vegan I do consider consuming animal products to be unethical because of the harm they create when being produced, however that’s not the point I’m getting at here. I think a lot of the time what causes people to label a food as bad comes less from the food itself and more from a disconnection to what we eat. Michael Pollan’s quote, “You can eat whatever you want… as long as you cook it yourself”, is one that helps me explain my relationship with food and eating in an era where half of American children think bacon comes from a bacon plant. When your food comes in packages with long lists of ingredients, or packaged neatly in plastic from a restaurant, you don’t really know what it is you’re eating. And we’re busy. So we’re forced to make snap decisions, and rely on heuristics we’ve made. Foods with a lot of calories, bad. Packages labeled “all natural”, good. Anything with seed oils, bad. And if I had a really bad day, I deserve to have those bad foods, but later I’ll feel bad that I ate them.

But making food yourself is different. You know what’s going into your food, and you know the time and effort it takes. The closer your ingredients are to what they looked like coming from the earth, the more I think that it’s true. A great example of a food I make myself (sometimes) is homemade doughnuts. I start with flour, and work my way to a dough that then needs to rest, be shaped, and get fried in a huge pot of oil. After frying them they’re topped with whatever sweet glaze or frosting, and perhaps filled too. Having done the work to make doughnuts from scratch (and it is work, I assure you), I’ve never felt guilt in eating them, and never feel bad at about showing some restraint. There is also something about the very act of cooking that I find nourishing. It is creative and nurturing. It is tactile, as your hands are engaged in making the food that will soon power your body. You can cook with others, for others, or as an act of self-love, and they’re all beautiful.

I don’t make all my food from scratch. I think I’d like to do more, but again, life is busy. I buy crackers from the store like everyone else, but I love when I have the quieter moments to go beyond a 30 minute dinner recipe and to make something different. I make most of my lunches and dinners, but I love when I have the motivation and time to make something spontaneous- a snack.

Looking for Great, Homemade Vegan Snacks? Try one of these!

How to Make this Vegan Cheese Cracker Recipe

You don’t need vegan cheese to make vegan cheesy crackers- with a few classic vegan cooking tricks we can easily get a cheesy flavor in these buttery crackers. The general idea is to make a dough, let it chill, roll, and bake.

The dough is simple enough. It all comes together in one bowl before it’s chilled. This dough is very forgiving, so don’t stress yourself out about it. Just make sure to work with the dough until it is even and uniform. I haven’t managed to overwork it yet despite rolling and re-rolling the same bit of dough repeatedly. Chilling the dough allows the vegan butter to harden, which makes the dough sturdier and easier to work with. If as your working the dough starts to break a lot or become difficult, try chilling it again and see if it becomes more manageable.

The most time-consuming part of this recipe is rolling and shaping your crackers. First make sure you roll the dough out in a fairly thin layer. Most importantly is that your dough is the same thickness all the way across so that your crackers will cook evenly. Think about the purpose behind your crackers before you shape them. We made this batch into sea creatures, which made them perfect for snacking, especially if you have little ones. Which I don’t, I just like fun shaped snacks. If you have small cookie cutters or vegetable cutters you can use any one of those to make fun and playful shapes to your liking. But if you want to serve your crackers with dip, a larger shape would be easier for the dipper to handle. And if you want to top them with toppings or have the serve as the base of a party bite, larger circles will lend themselves well. There’s no right or wrong shape for the crackers, but your use will tell you how they need to end up.

If you do end up making larger crackers, you may need to increase the cook time a little, so pay attention and adjust accordingly. Your crackers will cook very quickly, so make sure to keep an eye on them. You want to remove them from the oven when the bottoms have started to brown, but the tops aren’t showing much change in color. They will actually darken some once you’ve removed them from the oven, so if they’ve already started to brown in the oven they may end up a little over done. Once you take them out let them cool for a couple minutes on the baking tray before transferring them to a large plate to cool. When they first come out of the oven they will be quite soft, but as they cool they will harden. The end texture will be flaky and delicate, almost like a cheesy pie crust texture.

After allowing them to fully cool, store your crackers in an airtight container on the counter. Eat them within a day or two, and enjoy!

Buttery Vegan Cheese Cracker Recipe

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Yield: 3 cups of small crackers

Buttery Vegan Cheese Cracker Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup vegan butter, room temperature
1 tbsp. light miso paste
1 tbsp. plant-based milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
1/4 tsp. baking powder

Instructions

Add the vegan butter and miso paste to a mixing bowl, and mash together well. Add the plant-based milk and apple cider vinegar, and combine. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix until a dough forms. One you have a dough, tip the dough out onto a clean counter and knead until smooth. Form into a disc, wrap in clingfilm, and place in the fridge or freezer to chill so to make rolling and handling it manageable.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper, and set aside. It's easier to work with the dough in smaller pieces, so divide the dough in half and set on half aside. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out into a thin layer using the cling wrap on top of the dough to prevent sticking. Cut into the shape cracker you desire, and set in a single layer on the baking sheet. Rework any scraps into a ball and repeat. If the dough becomes hard to manage, return it to the freezer for a while and it will be less crumbly.
Once your baking sheet is full, place in the oven for 5-7 minutes. You want the bottom to be a little browned, and the tops not to have changed in color much. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a couple minutes, and remove from the baking sheet to finish cooling. Work in batches to roll out and bake all the crackers. Allow to cool fully before enjoying and storing any extra in an air-tight container.

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