Description
With two crisp and buttery crackers sandwich crackers and a peanut butter filling, these copycat Ritz peanut butter cracker sandwiches look like the real thing and taste amazing.
Ingredients
Crackers:
- 1 1/2 cups bread flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 1 egg, beaten + 1 tablespoon water
- a few pinches of kosher salt for topping
Peanut Butter Filling:
- 3/4 cup unsweetened natural peanut butter
- 4-5 tablespoons powdered sugar (optional)
Instructions
- Make your dough. Add bread flour, chilled butter, baking powder, sugar, and salt to a food processor and pulse a few times, until the butter pieces are about the size of peas. If you don't have a food processor, you can gently work the dough together with your hands or use a pastry cutter.
- Add in the water and pulse a few more times to incorporate.
- Shape and chill your dough. Move the dough to a baking mat or another clean surface and press it together until it forms a ball. Divide into two pieces and flatten each into a 1/2 inch thick rectangle, wrap with plastic wrap, and chill them in the fridge for at least an hour.
- Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350˚F.
- Form your crackers. Roll your chilled dough into a circle about 9-10 inches in diameter. It should be about 1/8" thick. Aim for slightly thicker rather than thin if you're not sure, as they will burn if they are too thin. Cut into rounds with your fluted pastry ring and carefully transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. The crackers don't really expand, so you can space them closely together. Repeat with your other dough half.
- Get your crackers ready for the oven. Using a skewer, poke some holes into your crackers. Regular Ritz crackers have 7 holes, and the sandwich crackers have 9. For authenticity's sake, we went with 9, but you can do 2-4, since this is pretty time consuming. Beat an egg with 1 tablespoon of water, then brush lightly onto each cracker. Sprinkle crackers with a bit more kosher salt.
- Bake your crackers. Move crackers to the oven and bake for around 15 minutes, or until outer edges of the crackers are golden brown.
- Make the peanut butter filling and assemble. Let the crackers cool to room temperature. Mix together peanut butter and powdered sugar and pipe or smear onto a cracker, then top with another to create your peanut butter sandwich.
Notes
Peanut butter filling: If you don’t want any added sugar in the filling, you can also just use a thicker unsweetened peanut butter or you can use powdered peanut butter with some water to thin it out.
Chill the dough: Don't skip chilling your dough after you form it into a ball. We found that the longer we let it rest, the better the crackers turned out, and we let it chill for around 2 hours during testing. We would recommend letting it chill for at least 1 hour in the fridge.
Egg wash: The more vibrant your yolks, the more golden brown these crackers will get, since they don't really brown on their own, so don't be shocked if your crackers come out pretty pale. They still taste buttery and delicious.
You will have some dough left over after cutting our your circles. You can re-roll this dough to cut out more crackers, but we have found that it usually behaves a little differently during baking (usually by rising more dramatically). It will taste the same, however.
If you don't have a round cookie cutter, you can just cut these into squares or rectangles with a knife or pizza cutter.
Storage: Stored in an airtight container, these should remain crisp for 3-5 days. Just note that if you use natural peanut butter and no powdered sugar, they will get a little messy in storage as the peanut butter will run out of the crackers a bit.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Rest Time: 1 hour
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Category: Snacks
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 3 sandwiches
- Calories: 276
- Sugar: 5.9 g
- Sodium: 262.5 mg
- Fat: 17.7 g
- Carbohydrates: 24.3 g
- Fiber: 1.5 g
- Protein: 7.5 g