Homemade Cheese-Its

I made some little crackers for the girls' school treats tonight. They're pretty cute, extremely tasty, and easy to make (though a little time-consuming if you choose to go the cookie-cutter method. You could easily roll the dough into a log and cut off thin rounds to save time).

HOMEMADE CHEESE-IT CRACKERS
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Cheese Straw recipe

Makes about 100 half-inch crackers

1 1/2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese
4 tablespoons butter, softened and cut into 4 pieces
3/4 cup flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (this is half the original amount and was still a little on the spicy side for 3-5 year olds, so I actually used a little less than 1/4 tsp for my second batch)
1 tablespoon cream (the original recipe calls for half-and-half, but I had cream on hand)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a food processor, combine the cheese, butter, flour, salt and red pepper in five 5-second pulses. Add the cream and process until the dough forms a ball, about 10 seconds.

3. Divide the dough in half and form into balls. Chill for an hour or more.*

4. On a lightly floured surface, roll half the dough out to about 1/8th inch or a little thinner. Using a miniature star cookie cutter (or any other shape, of course) cut out crackers. Using the blunt end of a skewer, poke a hole in the center of each cracker. Transfer carefully to an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat with the other ball of dough, or if you can only find one cookie sheet like me, proceed to step 5 and then come back when you're done baking this batch.

5. Bake the crackers until the tops are just barely starting to turn brown - 11 minutes in my oven, but check them often.

6. Cool on cookie sheet for a couple of minutes and then finish cooling on cooling rack.

*I confess that I usually don't chill my dough. And I didn't chill this dough at first, but it got too hard to work with, so after the first batch, I stuck the second ball into the freezer while the first batch of crackers was baking, and it was much easier to work with.