Ever see the classic movie Alice in Wonderland, in which the Mad Hatter and the crazy Cheshire Cat speak a bunch of senseless gibberish? We weren’t acting any more sane when, at the end of many long months of cooking experiments for this book, we decided to come up with another FP cracker. This recipe is a multiple-serve recipe, of which you can eat up to 1/4th of the recipe to stay in FP-mode.
Mad Melbas is found in the “All Things Smooth and Crunchy – Crackers, Chips, and Dips” section of the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook, pages 454 & 455.
Mad Melbas
Description
Ever see the classic movie Alice in Wonderland, in which the Mad Hatter and the crazy Cheshire Cat speak a bunch of senseless gibberish? We weren’t acting any more sane when, at the end of many long months of cooking experiments for this book, we decided to come up with another FP cracker. Mad Melbas is found in the "All Things Smooth and Crunchy - Crackers, Chips, and Dips" section of the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook, pages 454 & 455. This recipe is a multiple-serve recipe of which you can eat up to 1/4th of the recipe to stay in FP-mode.
Ingredients
For the Crackers
Optional Toppings:
Instructions
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Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly coat an 8-inch or 7 × 9- inch rectangular baking dish with coconut oil spray.
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Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl, blending with a whisk. Spread out into the prepared dish. (Alternatively, you could bake in a 12-cup muffin tin but the tops of the crackers may not look so perfectly “melba-ish.”)
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Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
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Allow to cool briefly in the dish and then invert to remove from the dish to cool completely.
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Slice in half lengthwise. Now you will have two Melba loaves to slice into perfect Mad Melbas. Don’t slice too crazy thin, slice nice thin pieces that will crisp up delightfully.
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Lay the slices cut size down on a large baking sheet or baking stone, and if using, spray slices with coconut oil spray, then sprinkle on the toppings of choice. Bake at 350°F for an additional 10 or so minutes (keep a watch so they don’t burn).
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Turn the oven off and leave the crackers to cool slowly, the longer the better for them to crisp up. (Alternatively, you can bake them overnight on the lowest setting your oven allows; this is a foolproof way of never burning your Melbas.)
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Remove from the oven, allow to cool, and store in zippered bags.
Note
From page 454 of the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook:
"We loved our Crunkers (page 452), but knew that we couldn’t really pig out on them and stay in FP range (did we mention we like to pig out?). We kept tweaking and tweaking one simple cracker, formulating changes and adjusting fat to protein to net carb ratios. Ugh! . . . with little scribbles on pieces of paper for various batch results taped and completely covering our fridges and parts of our walls. The cracker started tasting more and more like cardboard. Our husbands had to rescue us from our crazy-bin kitchens and take us out to dinner with a cooking ban for the night! We gave ourselves some “We really do love cooking” positive speech therapy and refreshed our noggins with a glass of Good Girl Moonshine (page 397) (that we halfway promise did not contain any hard liquor). Then the very simple solution jumped into our heads. How about we just turn our perfectly FP Swiss Bread recipe (page 196) into crackers—and by jingo, it worked! These Mad Melbas and the following Swiss Crackers (page 457) were conceived from the ruins of our brains and we believe (though no one else will vouch for us) we have been almost sane ever since. Mad Melbas are crunchy, crispy, and perfect for loading goodies on. Woo-hoo! Off with our straitjackets!"
