Sometimes I like to reinvent the wheel. Why buy it when I can make it. From homemade Peanut Butter to homemade Baileys Irish Cream, enter homemade graham crackers. I grew up eating so many graham crackers and loved them. In today’s world, full of spiced Biscoff cookies and Double Stuffed Oreos, it seems the humble graham cracker may have a hard time competing. Well, game on because these crispy, crunchy, cinnamon-infused crackers hold their own. This is a bucket list recipe I’ve been wanting to make for a couple years and finally did it. Making the dough is fast, easy, and starts like making cookie dough. Combine butter, dark brown sugar, honey, molasses, and vanilla. Cream until it’s light and fluffy, and add in the two flours, cinnamon, baking soda, and mix until the dough comes together. Chill it, roll it out, and bake crackers.
The only item that may throw you for a loop is whole wheat pastry flour, otherwise known as graham flour. Yes, they’re the same thing, much to the surprise of many, including me until I started doing research for this recipe. Whole wheat pastry flour, or graham flour, is what we associate the taste of graham crackers to be. It’ is milled from low-protein soft wheat, producing a flour with a mellow 9% protein compared to all-purpose, which is around 10-11% or bread flour that’s around 11-12%. It has the softness and fineness of cake flour, with the health benefits of wheat flour, and has a telltale graham flavor.
King Arthur makes one but I used Bob’s Red Mill because I found it locally. iHerb sells the flour for $5 bucks, and if you have other shopping to do, I highly recommend iHerb for everything from vanilla stevia drops to probiotics to nutritional yeast. Coupon code AVE630 will save you $5 bucks on your order, so the flour is basically free. If you absolutely don’t want to pick up whole wheat pastry flour, I’m sure you can use regular whole wheat flour, although I haven’t tried the recipe that way.
After mixing the dough, wrap it and chill for at least 2 hours, or up until 5 days. I love make-ahead doughs because I can roll out and bake at my leisure. This dough is scrumptiously good and aside from the butter, it’s vegan (no eggs or dairy). I bet you could use vegan butter or vegetable shortening with success.
On a floured surface or Silpats pushed together, roll out the dough to one-eighth of an inch thick. The thinner you roll the dough, the crunchier, crisper and lighter your crackers will be. Rolling it as thin as I could before it ripped yielded my best, crispiest crackers. I placed two large pieces of plasticwrap over the dough before rolling so it didn’t stick to the rolling pin and so I didn’t have to use additional flour, which dries it out. Cut it out with biscuit or cookie cutters, or slice it with slice with a pizza wheel or fancy pastry cutter that makes ruffled edges. I prefer the pizza wheel method so I didn’t have to re-roll dough as many scraps that come from using cookie cutters. I made my crackers about 3×3 inches each, but getting creative with the shapes and sizes is up to you. It’s almost like making gingerbread cookies.
Transfer the dough to baking sheets and pierce the crackers several times each with a fork to prevent them from puffing up like hot air balloons while baking. I fit 15 crackers per tray, spaced about 3/4-inch apart. The crackers don’t spread as much as cookies, but they spread a bit more than I anticipated. Some baked into each other and I had to separate them with a spatula edge so the spacing in the photo below is as tight as I’d recommend. I baked one tray at a time because my oven has one perfect rack and if I try to bake using both racks, neither turn out well, as I’ve learned from cookie-making. While the first tray bakes, keeping the second tray in the fridge so the dough stays cool will prevent spreading.
Before putting the trays in the oven, sprinkle the tops with a cinnamon-sugar mixture. I used turbinado sugar. After baking, I hit them with a pinch more sugar. You can never have too much sugar. I like the visual appeal of the big sugar crystals and because the sugar has hints of molasses, it complements the molasses used in the dough. Plus biting down into all those crunchies is the best.
Bake the crackers for about 15 minutes, rotating the trays halfway through. The crackers firm and crisp up as they cool, so don’t overbake. They’re dark and it’s hard to see how dark they’re getting, but nothing says disgusting quite like burnt sugar or burnt whole wheat flour so watch them If you thought all graham crackers were created equal, or that graham crackers are just something you crush up to use as the crust in a recipe, these will change your mind. They’re crispy, crunchy, more buttery, and richer tasting than storebought. Between the graham flour, dark brown sugar, honey, and molasses, they have a flavor depth unlike any graham crackers I’ve ever tried.
The sweetness from the dark brown sugar and honey gives them just enough sweetness to make them very satisfying and they’re almost graham-cookies rather than graham-crackers. Fine by me. Since there’s cinnamon in both the dough and sprinkled on top, the flavor is noticeable without being overdone. If you prefer plain graham crackers, omit the cinnamon in one or both places. If you really love cinnamon, doubling the amount added to the dough would be fine and it still wouldn’t be over-powering. All that flour can handle a heavy hand with the cinnamon. There’s likely a way to turn them into chocolate graham crackers by replacing some of the all-purpose flour with cocoa powder, but for now, I’ll happily spread Nutella or Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter on them when I want to get my chocolate fix on.
They’re good enough to stand on their own and I’ve been happily making crumbs all over my house as I nibble on them. They are addictive and I keep reaching for one more, one more. If you like to dunk cookies in your coffee, these are made for dunking.
The crackers are even better when made into smores. I used 3 big homemade marshmallows with 3 small chunks of dark chocolate laid on top of the marshmallows. Ten seconds later in the microwave, and ooey, gooey smores are ready. My six year old told me this was the best thing I’ve ever made. I tend to not entirely discount her statement because she did recipe test my cookbook with me. She can give you a dissertation on dark vs. bittersweet vs. milk chocolate or how the sugar crystals would reflect light “and be all sparkly and pretty in the pics, Mommy.” You’ll never look at graham crackers as ‘just’ a graham cracker after trying homemade. Or homemade smores.
Related Recipes
I’d love to try homemade graham crackers in place of the graham crackers in any of these bars: Tried this recipe? Leave a review! Consider leaving a 5 star rating if you’ve made and loved one of my recipes! Peanut Butter Cocoa Krispies Smores Bars (almost no-bake)
Chocolate Banana and Biscoff Graham Bars
Nutella and Peanut Butter Graham Bars with Chocolate Frosting (No-Bake)
Magic Eight Bars
Deep Dish Double Chocolate Golden Grahams Smores Bars (with vegan & GF options) Vegan Gluten-Free Seeds-Only Crackers (Homemade Mary’s Crackers)
Fruit, Seed and Nut Crackers
Do you like graham crackers? Have you made any copycat, homemade or DIY versions of a fave storebought treat? Some of my faves are Butterfinger Bars (No-Bake, with Vegan & GF options), Baileys Irish Cream, Thin Mints (No-Bake, Vegan), and Auntie Anne’s-style pretzels ready in 1 hour. If you have favorite recipes using graham crackers or a fave DIY or copycat recipes, please share the links. Thanks for the Deluxe Bulk Foods Sampler Pack Giveaway entries
