We don’t eat many processed foods in our house. Though treats are plentiful, they are usually in the form of homemade baked goods. One regular exception is the famous blue box that lives in the lowest cupboard of the kitchen where little hands can reach it — graham crackers.
Not long ago, I discovered graham flour in a food catalog and the light bulb went off — I could make my own graham crackers! I ordered a few bags of organic graham flour and my research began.
I come from a family of educators. My parents were the type who encouraged us (as our eyes rolled) to “look it up.” Before the Internet, there were encyclopedias and ours got plenty of use, often finding its way to the dinner table. Because of this, I am in the habit of learning about the history or origin of a food before I seek out recipes.
My search into graham cracker history yielded an unexpected tale from the early 19th century. I learned that the crunchy snacks are named for a minister, Sylvester Graham, who created the biscuits as a healthy addition to a diet he preached to his devoted followers. The base of the cracker, graham flour, is comprised of ground white flour with coarsely ground wheat bran and wheat germ. Today, commercial graham crackers are made with refined, bleached white flour, which was precisely what the Rev. Graham valiantly opposed!
In my search for graham cracker recipes, I found a considerable amount of variation. Some include eggs while others do not, and sweeteners vary between molasses, honey and sugar. Many do not use graham flour, but I decided to stay true to the cracker’s roots and feature the flour for which it was originally named.
After three batches and a number of tweaks to the recipe, my 4-year-old daughter, and best critic, announced that this version was yummy and “just as good as the blue box.”
This recipe was developed for Spice Islands.
Homemade Honey Cinnamon Graham Crackers
- Yield: 24 crackers 1x
Description
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups graham flour
½ cup unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon Spice Islands® Ceylon Cinnamon
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons Spice Islands® Pure Vanilla Extract
¼ cup grade A honey
¼ cup whole milk + 2 Tablespoons
Spice Islands® Cinnamon Sugar Grinder (for topping crackers), or combined 1/4 cup sugar with 1 tablespoon cinnamon to make your own
Ingredients
Cut the butter into ½ inch cubes and put it in the freezer while you prepare the other ingredients.
Put both flours, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt and brown sugar into a food processor and pulse until it is combined.
In a separate bowl, combine the honey, ¼ cup milk and vanilla. They do not need to be well mixed, just stirred together so it may be added to the dry ingredients at once.
Add the butter into the food processor and pulse until butter is incorporated and the mixture is like fine crumbles (pulsing about a minute).
Pour in the honey, milk and vanilla mixture and turn on the food processor until large clumps of dough form.
Remove the dough and use your hands to press the dough together and form two disks. Wrap the disks in parchment paper and put them in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes. If you plan to keep it in the refrigerator longer, put it in a sealed bag to keep it from drying out.
Remove the disks one at a time and use a rolling pin dusted in graham flour to roll out the dough until it is 1/8 inch thick. If you don’t roll the dough thin enough, the crackers will be thick and may not be crunchy.
Use a pastry cutter or pizza wheel to cut into 2 ½ inch squares. Make holes in the crackers with the tong of a fork if you want them to resemble store-bought graham crackers.
Using a sharp spatula, transfer the crackers onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
Using the 2 Tablespoons of milk, brush a light coating of milk on top of each cracker.
Immediately top each cracker with a healthy sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar.
Bake the crackers at 350 F for 22-25 minutes. When finished, the edges should be getting brown and the center should be barely soft when touched. They will become crunchy as they cool.
Remove the pans from the oven and let the crackers cool.
Store the crackers in an airtight container for a week.