Devil’s Advocate is currently reading through the recipe collection for the Artist’s Survival cookbook. He held his hand up for the task as he couldn’t contribute a recipe, despite his love for food. He just doesn’t cook. Mouse was delighted to have found another pair of eyes to look over the work. It is a well-known fact, that you can’t see mistakes, when you are too close to the project. So she gratefully gave him the pile of paper and left him to it. He started at the beginning, as one does. You might remember, we did cracker recipes right at the start, as they don’t require many ingredients just flour and water and maybe a little oil or butter. After all the book is to show how many yummy staples you can make from very basic ingredients. Devil’s Advocate loves crackers. He normally devours an entire packet when he watches TV. So he was amazed when he read how easy they are to make and as it was Sunday, he was keen to have a go himself.
But gee was he disappointed with the result. The crackers didn’t hit his taste buds at all. They reminded him more of crispbread, rather than the crackers he favours. His favourite ones are a tad richer and sort of friable. But on the upside the crackers weren’t difficult to make and had hardly any ingredients. The attempt made him realise how much money he would save, if he could make his favourite food himself. He asked Mouse if she has another recipe that might be more like what he was after. Mouse didn’t need much time to think and said: “Just add more butter and less water and maybe you want to add a leavening agent to make them more airy.” Devil’s Advocate looked blankly at her. “You have to be more precise” he said “I am an absolute novice!”
“Okay then” replied Mouse, “here is another cracker recipe. It might be a little bit too rich and it has more ingredients. That’s why I call them the rich man’s crackers.” She then explained to Devil’s Advocate, that you basically can use any combination of flour, water and butter/oil to create crackers. The baking soda and yoghurt in the following recipe is not really necessary, but it fluffs the crackers up a little. Keep track of any changes you make to the recipe, so you can repeat it when you get the the combination that hits the right spot on your taste buds.
Ingredients
1 cup of flour, ½ teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of salt, 4 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of plain yoghurt, 4 to 5 tablespoons of cold water
Method
Mix flour, baking soda and salt together. Add the butter and rub with your fingertips into the flour until it is well distributed and the mixutre resembles semolina. Add the yoghurt and also distribute well. Last add the water. Add one tablespoon at the time and knead into the dough. Add only as much as is needed that the dough sticks together well. Let rest in the frigde while the oven preheats to 2100C.
Roll out the dough thinly. It will rise a little during baking. Cut in squares or other shapes and place on a baking tray. The dough contains so much butter, that it is not necessary to butter the tray. Brush the surface of each shape with water and prick with a fork a couple of times.
Bake in the oven for 10 mins or until slightly brown.
Let cool on a wire rack.
dedepuppets 
Great post, as usual, I feel for Mr Advocate since I seem to get so many of my recipes wrong. I was reminded of the late 60’s early 70’s in Zambia where I lived at the time. There were lots of political problems, not entirely of the country’s making, that resulted in major food shortages. My mother managed to get a mere one kilo of flour in two years! The only alternative was ground corn, what we called Mealie-meal, and if bread was made in the usual way it came out grey and fairly unpalatable. It helped to use deep yellow palm-oil instead of butter which also gave it an interesting flavour. At least the corn-bread was gluten free. I haven’t taken much notice but do the Dedes have a gluten free bread?
Thanks for your story. OMG 1kg of flour in 2 years. The Dedes would starve, or would become more inventive. There is this gluten free grain called Teff, which is an Ethopian highland grain. This could be used for glutenfree bread. However, if we eat it, we might cause a food crisis in Ethopia.
And no, we don’t have a glutenfree bread. Do you have a recipe :) Cornbread sounds interesting!
I don’t have a good history sending you recipes, still feel like a noo-noo only sending you half of the last one – but, sadly, no those recipes from the old days have been lost years ago in one of the many moves. I am still in contact with the group from Zambia and I will ask them.
Don’t worry about the last recipe :), I really liked your Milk tert. I would certainly try another recipe you send through!