MAYA: Please welcome Peggy Ehrhart with her new book, Irish Knit Murder. She'll give you a taste of what's in the book and also pick one person who comments to receive a free copy. Take it away Peggy!
PEGGY: Irish Knit Murder, the tenth book in my cozy Knit & Nibble series, takes place on and around St. Patrick’s Day, so of course there is feasting that involves corned beef and cabbage. There’s another festive meal as well, hosted by Bettina and Wilfred Fraser, who are the best friends of my sleuth Pamela Paterson.
Exploring the recipes in his new cookbook, Wilfred cooks up a pot of New Orleans-style gumbo in a belated acknowledgment of Mardi Gras. As a prelude to the meal he serves homemade cheese crackers, commenting that “people have been making them in the South forever and there are as many names for them as there are recipes.”
I invented my own name for them: Cheese Dibs.
Cheese Dibs are a great party recipe. The dough can be made ahead and stored for a few days in the refrigerator, then sliced and baked at the last minute. They are particularly delicious when served warm.
The recipe makes
about 30 to 40 crackers.
The
dough needs to chill for at least an hour before baking, so start well in
advance.
Ingredients
7 oz. sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cayenne (or use less if don’t want the crackers too spicy)
7/8 cup flour
Grate the cheese. In a medium-sized bowl, cream the butter with an electric mixer. Blend in the cheese with a big spoon.
In a separate bowl, add the salt and cayenne to the flour.
Mix the salt and cayenne into the flour and add the result to the cheese mixture. Blend it all together. You will probably have to use your hands—you want it to cling together in clumps.
Spoon half the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and use the plastic wrap to help mold and shape the dough into a roll. It might look unpromising at first but keep working at it.
You want to end up with a roll about 1 1/2” in diameter. Repeat this process with the other half of the dough. Chill the dough rolls for about an hour (or longer).
Butter two large cookie sheets if you want to bake all the Cheese Dibs at once—otherwise butter one cookie sheet. With a sharp knife, slice the dough rolls into rounds about 1/4" thick, or less, and lay them in rows on the cookie sheets, not too close together. If the rounds crumble a bit you can reshape them with your fingers.
Bake the Cheese Dibs at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until they are golden brown, but check them after 15 minutes. They might be done. Remove them from the oven and let them cool slightly.
Use a pancake turner to loosen them from the cookie sheets, gently sliding it under each Cheese Dib. Leave them on the cookie sheets to finish cooling. If you wait too long before loosening them, they will get very crisp and will crumble when you try to remove them.
Here they are on my vintage four-leafed clover platter. You can see that the nibblers have already declared dibs on about half the batch.
What is your favorite party recipe?
Peggy Ehrhart is a former English professor with a doctorate in Medieval Literature. Her Maxx Maxwell blues-singer mysteries were published by Five Star. Peggy now writes the Knit & Nibble mysteries for Kensington. Her sleuth, Pamela Paterson, is the founder of the Knit and Nibble knitting club in the charming town of Arborville, New Jersey. The most recent Knit & Nibble mystery is Irish Knit Murder, due out on February 21, 2023.
