A crunchy, cracking snack; mixed seeds baked to a crispy sheet, then broken into shards to crumble over your salad or to pair with a chunk of cheese for a moreish bite. And it’s healthy as well as gluten free and keto-friendly!
Copycat seed crackers
Here is another one of my copycat recipes: seed crackers as encountered and devoured at L’Enclume in Cartmel.
They were presented exquisitely in a box; every course at L’Enclume seems to have as awesome a packaging as content, to make you unsure which parts were not edible.
They were also served specially to The Weather Man who at the time was suffering from mild gluten intolerance. I got a chunk of gorgeous sourdough but I was eying up his crackers so enviously I was finally thrown a shard.
Amazing: salty, super-crunchy, wafer thin but with seeds miraculously intact; I thought at the time it must have taken intricate cheffy procedure and special equipment to make them.
Can you make crackers at home?
You absolutely do not need any special devices or cheffy skills to make a batch. And if you, like me, are a birdbox hoarder of seeds, you can have these as often as desired; and that will certainly be often.
They are a versatile snack – a good source of protein, healthy fat and fibre. Vegetarians will especially appreciate them: a salad turns into a proper meal with a liberal sprinkling of seeds or, like in this case, with seed crackers to munch alongside. They go with cheese as well as much less interesting oatcakes: a few shards of seed crackers, a selection of cheese morsels and an apple: that's what I call a delicious lunch.
Special diet cracker versions
If needed, you can make a gluten-free version if you skip millet grains, or keto-friendly version if you omit both millet and maple syrup. They can then serve as bread replacement: fashion open sandwich of sorts out of them when buttered and/or spread with ham or salami.
How do they hold together?
Seed crackers are a layer of assorted seeds, the more varied the merrier, held together with egg white and a little maple syrup, and baked into a thin sheet. No worries even if you are not awfully meticulous spreading them into a single layer: just bake them a bit longer if the layer is thicker.
And once they are out of the oven and cooled on the parchment they baked on, you can cut them into squares, break pieces off at random or crumble them over dishes to use as a topping. Add Parmesan; add honey; mix in herbs or spices – these are so easy to make you can experiment away.
I will make my point though: more often than not the plain is the kind I return to.
Do the amounts need to be precise?
Not in the slightest; I have given them below because it's a recipe after all, but you don't have to be precious about quantities. Use as much as you like and whatever you like. It's one of those wonderful concoctions that comes out slightly different every time!