Spicy Cheese Crackers

These crackers have gone through a few incarnations before arriving to their present place as a crisp and crunchy savoury snack. The very first variation was more like a regular cookie, complete with Cornflakes, and it was a little... off... to say the least. Half the fun of baking is when things go a little awry, and this was a fascinating failure. The mismatch between flavour of the cheese and spice and cookie-like texture was huge, and the addition of Cornflakes took everything into a whole other weird dimension. I can safely say I've never tried anything remotely like that before. It was back to the drawing board another couple of times after that before it landed as a cheesy version of a rice cracker, light and thin with a bit of a spicy kick.

Since these crackers are all about the cheese, make sure you do what you can to make it the star. Don't get that bag of pre-grated - if you can, take a block, make sure it's a hard or semi-hard cheese that's got a full, robust flavour to it (something like a sharp cheddar), and get to shredding for max cheesiness. Sesame seeds bring an extra nuttiness to the crackers, and black ones are used here for a pop of colour. Regular sesame seeds should do just fine if you don't want to hunt these down.

One small light-bulb moment for me as I catch up to the rest of the baking world - grated is for when you want something small and fine, shredded is when you use the big holes on a box grater to make your pieces have a little more substance to them.