Graham Crackers!

I love graham crackers. Always have. I mean, is there anything on EARTH better than a smore? I didn't think so!

But its another food on the list of "can't find it here". There is a biscuit that has a similar taste and texture, but its not the same, darnit!!!

Ahem. Anyways. I found a recipe for this in the book I mentioned in my last post. But that recipe calls for molasses. Nothing wrong with that, and on the whole not bad cookies. But they felt like they were missing something. It dawned on me what it was the other day when I got it in my head to make these the other day, but realized we were out of molasses (and did NOT feel like trying to cart the kids to the store just to get more). It dawned on me- all the graham crackers I ate in the US had the name "honey maid" on them. Honey! Yes! THAT'S what it was. I realized then that the recipe in the book used molasses because its a vegan cookbook, and vegans don't eat honey. (probably another reason I will never go vegan- I LOVE honey!). Armed with a full jar of honey, I produced a super delicious cracker- and this time got the flavor AND the crunchy cracker bit right! Yes!

I will warn you- these are a little involved. Not terribly, mind you- but more work than say a chocolate chip cookie would be (oooh, chocolate graham crackers- gotta try that next!), but well worth it in my opinion.

Here is the recipe. This will make quite a few- but when I make cookies- I have to MAKE COOKIES. The hubby pretty much always takes about half of whatever I make with him to work, so I have to make sure the rest of us have something left over ;-) You can easily halve this recipe if you don't happen to have to make cookies for a human trash compactor.

Graham Crackers:

3 cups (whole wheat) flour

2/3 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

a bit less than a full tsp of salt

1/2 cup oil (I used olive oil, which I normally don't bake with because of the strong flavor, but in this instance it worked just fine- I was out of sunflower oil)

1/4 cup honey

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup of milk.

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a nice big bowl (you only need one bowl for this- yeay!) Make a well in the middle and add the oil, honey and vanilla, mixing until everything is kinda crumbly. Add milk slowly. Use your hands to kneed the dough- it shouldn't be too sticky, nice and pliable. If its too dry, add a touch more milk (about a tablespoon)

Cover work surface with parchement paper. (Little tip I learned- you can keep things from sliding around if you put a slightly damp towel UNDER the parchment paper.) Work ihalf the dough into a rectangle, and roll it out until its nice and thin. I know, recipes usually say some kind of measurement- but I have NO visualization skills for that- and end up using a ruler, only to discover whatever you have been told is SO off! My recipe said 1/8 of an inch- which is 3 mm. That is pretty thick. I rolled mine to about 1.5 mm- and they were plenty thick. They do puff a bit as they bake- so my suggestion is to eyeball it. If it looks good to you, its good. I didn't have any particular size I cut them too, either. My first rolling produced 8 crackers. Just remember if you make smaller crackers they won't have to bake as long. You need a good, sharp knife for this. Or a pizza cutter. I used a pizza cutter. Amazing! I will NEVER use anything else for this!

Carefully transfer your crackers to your cookie sheet (a rubber spatula with a bit of oil on it is a good tool for this. You could also just transfer your whole parchment sheet, where you rolled out the crackers, but that is really only practical for the first round. How many crackers you get out of the dough depends on how big you make them. Score them with a fork after cutting. (if you want a cinnamon/sugar topping, mix 2 tablespoons of sugar with 1 tsp of cinnamon, sprinkle on top, then score with a fork)

Baking time is kind of tricky. I would reccomend trying 12-14 minutes first. I baked mine for 15:30- but I always have to bake things longer (I need an oven thermometer- take the guesswork out of it. If you HAVE an oven thermometer, then 14 minutes should give you nice crunchy crackers. Make sure they don't burn!!

Sorry if my instructions are a bit haphazard. My baking style is very by the seat of my pants, and do what works for you. Hopefully these instructions aren't too hard to follow.

Enjoy!

making oreos

I make a lot of things myself. I love to knit, I just recently learned to crochet, and I am attempting to learn to sew (that is not going as well as I might like).

One of my biggest passions is baking. And without trying to sound too pompous or self-congratulatory, I am pretty good at it. I always enjoyed baking- but the discovery of an egg allergy in my son put me in a position where firstly, I needed to make more things myself (egg is in SO many surprising things!), and secondly, a challenge to bake without eggs.

The vegan kitchen has been a huge salvation in this regard! No, I am not vegan (though I still toy with making the conversion- not quite committed to giving up milk, cheese and yogurt- especially since dear son is also allergic to soy) But exploring the vegan kitchen has given me a chance to learn a lot of new things- and the best is, baking without eggs! Yippee!


This cookbook has been a great teaching tool for baking egg free! What I have learned from making these cookies, I have been able to apply to "normal" recipes, to make goodies that are safe for my son to eat.

There are a lot of great recipes in this book! The one I wanted to make the most the instant I saw it were the oreos. I LOVE oreos. Love love love them! The best ones are the double stuff ones. Which I cannot get where I live. Not to mention that oreos are kinda pricey here- AND ridiculously bad for you. Major bummer. (Like the thing you are most concerned about when eating something chocolaty and delicious is how bad it is for you...)

But I only JUST got around to making them for a few reasons. One, looking at the recipe, it looked like it might be somewhat time consuming (I was right- I was busy for pretty much a whole afternoon. Totally worth it though!). But the biggest problem was an ingredient problem. Mainly, that the recipe called for vegetable shortening. Which I cannot find here, anywhere. In the past, I have had no issues just using butter instead (since I am not vegan). But with the filling I thought "well, if I use butter, the filling won't really be the pretty white oreo-type filling!" So I held off.

I got it in my head, though, to make these cookies with the kids during their spring break. It seemed like a great rainy-day activity, so I picked a day that had been forecast to rain most of the day (it didn't). And I did some research. Namely- what the heck is vegetable shortening made out of, anyways?

Turns out, it depends on where its from, but shortening is actually a term for any fat that is solid at room temperature. So lard is also shortening (but, ick! I so was not going to use that!). The good ole American standard Crisco is a mix of soybean and cottonseed oils (I never knew that). Then I saw that a popular brand of shortening in Australia is made from coconut oil. Coconut oil! I can work with that!

So, my non-vegan /vegan cookies. These are not really vegan because I used normal milk instead of non-dairy milk. I subbed the shortening with coconut oil (and, no, it did not taste at all coconutty), and the flour I used whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour (which I generally do with ALL baking, and don't really BUY the white stuff anymore). So, that's it! I need to adjust the baking time next time, as they were on the soft side- but I have noticed that with all the cookies (don't know if its an altitude thing or if its my oven). Definitely must make these again!