Today was a little chilly, I had the day off, and my 3-year-old granddaughter (Eloise) came for a visit. All that made this the perfect day to bake something with the assistance of my newest sous chef so we decided to try making something fairly simple and new -- Galettes Au Fromage (Cheese Wafers). What a fun cooking adventure we had!
While the oven was preheating to 425 degrees, Eloise and I put all of the ingredients into our mixing bowl -- a half cup of flower, a half pound of softened butter, two cups of shredded Swiss cheese, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. Then we had fun smushing everthing together. Smushing is a technical word that means "knead." All of the cheese and flour got mixed together until it was a fairly consistent mixture. I'm hesistant to call it dough because it was really a mass of butter and cheese with a little flour holding it together.
The mixture was then scooped out a tablespoon at a time and then rolled around in our hands to make little balls. Eloise was good at this -- I think Playdough has been good practice for her. We both noticed, though, that this was a lot more messy than playdough. The balls of dough were placed on a buttered cookie sheet and then brushed with a little egg wash. Finally, a little sprinkle of shredded cheese was added on top. Well, it was supposed to be... This is where we had a bit of a misadventure.
We were excited to have everything placed on the cookie sheet and the oven all warmed up to 425. I put the cookie sheet in the oven and closed the door. Then I remembered the egg wash! After quickly pulling the cookie sheet out of the oven I brushed on the egg wash and putt the sheet back into the oven to let it bake for the prescribed 10-15 minutes.
I turned on the oven light so I could watch these things turn into lovely little wafers and saw them slowly spread out on the pan and watched the butter oozing out. 10 minutes went by and the wafers were definitely not browning. Another 5 minutes went by and they hadn't changed much. I opened the oven to peek directly (not through the door's glass) at the wafers and noticed that it didn't feel very hot. What???? The oven was turned off!! **sigh** Apparently I had managed to accidentally turn the oven off when I was pressing the button to turn on the oven light. As much as I would like to blame sous chef Eloise, it is hard to do so since she cant get within a foot of the off button, even standing on a stool!
Sooooooo, I pulled out the wafers and turned the oven back on and let it reheat to 425 and then put them in. Then it took about 5 minutes for them to crisp up. The second batch went much much smoother and you can see, in the photos below, that the second batch did not spread out anywhere near as much as the first one. Amazing! Today's food science lesson is that if you let these things sit in a cooling oven for half an hour it manages to melt all of the cheese and butter and everything just oozes into a large flat wafer. It worked much much better at the higher heat with the wafers crisping up quickly and only spreading out a small amount. The butter was bubbling when first out of the oven but you can see in the final photo how they actually turned into crispy little wafers!
Eloise (and the adults) loved munching on these cheesy little treats. Next time I make them I think I'll try cutting back on the butter a bit but other than that these were pretty good! Eloise approved and recommended these for the next time you need a nice hors douvres or just a fun snack. Oh, and remember to leave the oven on!
Bon Appetit!
It is always fun to cook with a small sous chef.