Cheesy Garlic Cauliflower Crackers - #CIC

Happy First Day of Spring!  Along with the first day of spring, today is also the day for our Crazy Ingredient Challenge.  This month's challenge is cauliflower and cheese which wasn't so much of a challenge or at least I didn't think so....

Cheesy Garlic Cauliflower Crackers

Have you ever started to make something and then ended up with something very different.  That is what happened with my challenge this month (although it does happen to me often).  Our group now votes for the ingredients that we want to use for this challenge.  We are given a few choices for the two ingredients and then the most votes for each ingredients wins.  This month those ingredients were Cheese and Cauliflower.   So, I thought that this is easy... I have used these two ingredients when I made my Chocolate Cauliflower Bites for another CIC, so this shouldn't be so hard.  Should it?

Well it wasn't the ingredients that made it so hard.  I decided that I wanted to make some Cauliflower Breadsticks... That would be easy wouldn't it and healthy.  So I started out to find a recipe that I could work with (I am not always so good at figuring out the recipe at short notice and I was making these yesterday). 

I found a recipe that I liked and I thought I could work with called Cauliflower Breadsticks Recipe from Ifoodreal.  I liked this recipe as it had no flour in it and looked like it could be fairly simple to work with.  Now it wasn't so hard but I did have cauliflower everywhere and I did spread it out too thin so had to make crackers instead of breadsticks.  Also when I took them out of the oven, let them cool and cut them, the bottom of the crackers weren't cooked enough so I ended up putting them back into the oven to crisp up the bottom...  The verdict.. continue to read to the bottom of the post.

 Ingredients:

1 large cauliflower head

1 egg

1/2 cup shredded cheese plus small amount to put on top (approx 1/4 cup)- I used a mozza/cheddar mix

1 tsp garlic

1 tsp parsley flakes

pinch of salt and pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
1.  Wash and cut off leaves and cut cauliflower in small pieces.  Place in Food Processor and process until cauliflower becomes like rice.
2.  Place in oven safe dish and cook at 375 degree for 20 minutes.  My cauliflower ended up getting a little brown around the edges but worked out fine.
3.  Place a towel or cheesecloth (I used cheesecloth), add cauliflower on the cheesecloth and squeeze out all the excess water.  I did this twice with different cloths.  In the original recipe it says that you should get about 1 cup of water.. I didn't measure.
Increase oven to 450 degrees F.
4. In medium bowl, mix cauliflower, egg, 1/2 cup cheese, egg and spices until well mixed.
5.  Spread out on cookie sheet about 1/4 inch thick.
6.  Bake at 450 degrees for 18 minutes, remove from oven and sprinkle small amount of cheese on top (I used only about 1/4 cup as I was looking for a healthier version, if you want a cheesier cracker, add more) and place under the broiler for a couple of minutes, until cheese is brown.
7.  Take out of oven and let cool slightly until you can cut them.  Cut crackers in about 2 inch squares. Turn crackers over so the bottom is up and place back into a 450 degree oven and cook until the bottoms are brown (approx 5-8 minutes).
8.  Take out of oven and cool and again.
Enjoy!

The Verdict:  I liked them, although would have preferred them to be a bit more crunch.  My thoughts is if I took out more water maybe they would be crunchier.  They are a great gluten free, healthy alternative to crackers.  My hubby didn't like the smell of the cauliflower cooking, he did say he tried them but didn't give me a verdict so I am thinking he really didn't like them very much.  These crackers work well with my 21 day Fix diet (Beachbody) and will be tasty with salsa or marinara sauce.

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