Hi and welcome to Bold Baking Basics!
This is where we get stuck into the fundamentals of baking.
These videos are about getting you to bake with confidence anytime anywhere.
So if you watch a lot of bigger bolder baking you'll know I use a lot of graham crackers
however they're an American cookie and they aren't always available worldwide.
So what do we do in this situation?
I show you how to make your own and trust me they're even better than store bought.
As always the recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com okay let's get started in a nice big bowl.
Add in your whole-wheat flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.
And then just mix these ingredients together.
So into our dry ingredients we're going to add our room temperature butter.
And then with your nice clean hands or you can use a dough cutter we're going to run
in the butter until it resembles kind of coarse breadcrumbs.
And what I mean by that is that you have some big lumps of butter and some small lumps.
So if you've never had a graham cracker before it's a whole-wheat cookie with a little bit
of honey and cinnamon they're really delicious.
Traditionally they're used in making s'mores, I also use them a lot for the bases of pies
and cheesecakes, they're just really really great.
So those are our dry ingredients now let's mix together our wet.
In a separate jug I'm going to add a little bit of milk, some runny honey, and some vanilla
extract.
And then just mix all these ingredients together.
You'll notice that there's no egg in this recipe, which is great, not all cookies need
eggs, and it just makes it that bit crisper.
Okay great, now what you want to do is add your wet ingredients into your dry.
Then with a spatula just mix it together.
Oh my gosh this smells really good.
So you'll see it kind of clump together, what you might want to do is get in there with
your hands and pull it together until it forms a ball of dough.
So my rule about cookie dough is that they always need to be chilled before you go to
roll them out cause it makes it so much easier so I'm gonna cover this in some cling wrap,
like so.
So right now I'm gonna pop this into the fridge for a minimum of one hour it'll make it so
much easier to roll out once it's cold.
What you can do at this stage also is leave it in the fridge for up to 3 days also it
freezes really well for up to 8 weeks.
So it's been an hour you wanna make sure dough gets really cold because it is a soft dough.
Now it is ready to be rolled out so on a floured surface with my rolling pin, I'm going to
roll this out until it's around a quarter of an inch thick.
I like these cookies a little bit on the thicker side but if you want them thinner you can
absolutely have them so.
So there you go I've got kind of a funny looking square circle this is perfect this is the
thickness that I want so here I have a pizza cutter and I have my ruler, I always have
to have a ruler in the kitchen, super important.
So what I'm going to do is just cut these cookies 2x5in now these are the traditional
shape of a graham crackers if you want different shapes go for it you can make them square
smaller whatever you like.
But I'm gonna cut these 2x5in.
Try and get them as even as you can.
So I have the shape that I want, now like I said this is a soft dough so you do want
to move kind of quickly, and carefully lift it up off the countertop and place them onto
your baking tray lined with parchment.
This cookie dough is on the softer side because of the honey.
If you're trying to add more whole wheat to your diet this is a sneaky little way of doing
it you get a cookie and you get whole wheat at the same time.
There we go lovely.
So I'm just gonna do one tray.
Like so.
Okay perfect.
Now they're the shape of graham crackers, they smell like graham crackers but we have
to make them look like graham crackers.
So I'm just gonna get a little knife and I'm gonna put a line down the center and across.
And then with a fork I'm just going to prick it on either sides.
Just to make sure it really looks like a traditional graham cracker.
So there you go our homemade graham crackers definitely look the part now they're gonna
be baked off.
So bake your graham crackers off at 350°F/180°C for roughly 10-12 minutes if you want them
really crisp, do 12 minutes.
So while our cookies are in the oven I'm gonna tell you something that I learned recently
that I thought was really interesting.
Graham crackers are called graham crackers because they're made with something called
graham flour.
That's right, graham flour is actually a thing, it's a whole wheat flour kind of coarsely
ground, and used a lot in baking and in breads and things like that so it's not just the
name of a cookie, it's actually the name of a flour used in the cookie.
Graham flour is actually named after preacher called Sylvester graham and he believe that
we all should be eating a diet high in whole wheat.
So these cookie take no time at all to bake they smell absolutely amazing.
Once they're cooled they'll be a little bit like this, they're snappy, they're crunchy,
they're delicious.
Without a doubt these blow store bought graham crackers out of the water like they're not
even in the same playing field.
These have a great flavor, with lovely cinnamon, honey.
You can use these in any of my recipes where I use graham crackers for something like my
homemade s'mores, or even my no-bake s'more pie, they'll make a great addition.
Head over to my website right now and check out how you can make homemade marshmallows
from scratch and homemade brown sugar.
I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.