This month's Daring Baker's challenge turned to the vegan and gluten-free community for a recipe. I am about as far from vegan as one could be, but I respect the huge amount of work that goes into modifying recipes for these diets, and it was great to see a little of that work first hand. By "see," I mean "read the recipe," because, not having any gluten-free flour, I lazily opted to make the non-gluten-free version.

Gluten A Go Go and Musings from the Fishbowl were our hosts for this month's challenge, and you can find the recipe for the lavash crackers on their sites. This is the kind of recipe you can easily commit to memory, make in the background of other kitchen projects, easily change up with different toppings, and pull out whenever the slightest need for crackers arises. Considering how much I loved these things, I see myself doing just that. I used a white whole wheat flour that gave the crackers an addictive nutty sweetness, and topped them with sea salt, sesame seeds and rosemary.

The only requirement for the accompanying dip was that it be gluten-free and vegan, and so I went with a very simple roasted eggplant dip. We've been getting some really fantastic eggplant from the CSA and the farmers market, with a variety of breeds with different flavors and textures. For the dip I used a mix of sweet little fairy tale eggplants, long skinny chinese eggplants, and a few mystery varieties— I find that the mixture makes for a rounded, extra-eggplanty flavor. I chopped the eggplant, seasoned it with cumin, garlic and salt, and cooked it in a baking dish covered with foil at 350 degrees until it was tender. I just puréed the cooked eggplant in the food processor and served it. It was great warm and cold, and an excellent compliment to the crisp cracker.

I liked these crackers so much that I made a double batch a few days later. Freed of the vegan restraints of the challenge, I used an egg wash to adhere the cracker toppings and served it with my homemade pâté.