Homemade Cinnamon Graham Crackers

 

Mmmm, we love graham crackers at my house.  My kids love to dunk them in a glass of milk or smear frosting all over them.  Okay, mom loves them, too.  They don't last long at our house, have absolutely no nutritional value and then the kids sneak them and won't eat real food.  Hence, I don't buy them often.  And the store bought variety takes a lot to feel like you've really eaten anything.

I've been trying to make more baked goods and foods at home so we can eat healthier and save the pocket book.  Having gone to a friend's house where Buddy got to eat pretzels for a snack, I decided to go home and try making a normally store bought snack food for him.  Two-year olds are picky eaters and this little guy takes the cake out of all my kids.  Plus, I love to bake and decided if it was homemade it would at least be somewhat real food, right? (Okay, homemade graham crackers aren't really healthy, either, but at least I know what is in them and they are delicious!)

So I hit Pinterest to see what I could find for graham cracker recipes.  The recipe had to fit two criteria - it had to be easy and I obviously had to have everything on hand.  I perused through a few recipes that either looked like too much work or had items like graham flour in them.  Umm, yeah, somehow in my little existence I'd never thought about what graham crackers were made of and how they got their name.  I'd actually never heard of graham flour before but it was a nice, "well, duh!" moment for me.

Thanks to servingjoyfully.com, I found one that looked promising both in the recipe and by the look of the picture.  I'm a visual girl so the example had to look yummy, too.  At first glance I thought the graham cracker would be too dense as her recipe calls for all whole wheat flour and no white.  While she used white wheat I only have hard red wheat on hand so I decided to do half red wheat and half regular store bought white flour.  After the cookie was all done, though, I can see why she used all hard white wheat. My second attempt later with more white flour, no cinnamon and less hard red what was awful and the texture was much closer to a real graham cracker with more fresh ground wheat.

After some alterations here is the recipe I decided I liked best.  And oh my, store bought graham crackers will never be the same.  I LOVED these!  Hubby really liked them, too, which is saying something because he's not a big baked goods fan.

Homemade Cinnamon Graham Crackers

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup white flour

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup melted butter

1/2 cup honey

1 tsp. vanilla

Cinnamon Graham Cracker recipe ingredients

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Mix together dry ingredients in smaller bowl and wet ingredients in larger bowl.  Blend dry ingredients into wet ingredients. I found the graham crackers to be sweeter than store bought brands.  If you would like them less sweet, omit 1/8 cup of honey and add a few tablespoons of water to help dough stick together.  Pictured below is the consistency the dough will need to be.

Cinnamon Graham Cracker recipe ingredients mixed together.

Using a jelly roll pan or large cookie sheet with sides, roll dough out until it fills the whole pan.  I used a 13 x 18 pan and didn't roll all the way out to the edges.  As you can see, my graham crackers turned out a little thicker.  So for true graham cracker thickness, roll very thin and all the way to the edges of the pan.  I did end up using a big cup to finish up as my rolling pan wouldn't work with a jelly roll pan.  I think one of these rolling pins without handles would be good to have.  This isn't the only time I've needed one.

Doesn't look like a lot, does it?

Cut dough into graham cracker sized pieces and pierce with a fork.  I did cut mine again after baking was done but you may be able to break them like a traditional cracker, too.  Here is what mine looked like after they were baked and still it the pan.  Yup, I've learned to go all the way to the edges of the pan.

Graham crackers baked and ready to cut -
make sure to roll yours out all the way to the edges!

Bake approximately 9 minutes or until edges start browning.  (Servingjoyfully.com recommended 10 minutes but that would have made mine too crisp.)  After removing from oven, slice graham crackers again while still somewhat warm.

Cinnamon Graham Crackers - all done!  Wahoo!

Grab a glass of milk and enjoy or let cool and spread with your favorite frosting.  Store leftovers (if any) in a plastic ziploc bag or container.  This does make a fair amount so we had leftovers.  And, my oldest taught himself how to make frosting just so he could spread it on his crackers.  Enjoy!