My first blog post a few weeks ago was about my attempt to make Graham Crackers for my daughter. Even though the Graham Crackers tasted okay, their texture was disappointing to me. I didn’t want to give up, though, because, I have an overwhelming need to feed healthy (but tasty) snacks to my daughter and I’m convinced Graham Crackers can become a staple snack for her (she eats plenty of fruit and veggies, so I’m cool with giving her cookies and crackers as long as they’re not all sugar and fat and have some (if not a lot of ) redeeming nutritional value).

Although the texture is still not quite what I want it to be, this batch turned out much better. I adapted my recipe from this one.

1 1/2 cups graham flour (I found it easily at Whole Foods and it resulted in a much different texture in the cracker)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
scant 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 cup oil
1/8 cup applesauce
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon brown rice syrup (I decided that I actually wanted to lighten up on the molasses-ness (so not a word, I know) of the previous batch of crackers and the brown rice syrup did the trick).
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup soy milk

The instructions below are copied from Isa Chandra’s recipe. The only difference is that I baked this batch of crackers for 16 minutes and they were still just on the verge of crispiness. I’m going to increase the baking time in future batches to 18 minutes and I think that will be the winning number.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a light colored baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Make a well in the middle and pour in oil, applesauce, molasses, brown rice syrup and vanilla. Give the liquid ingredients a quick wisk with a fork and then continue mixing until everything is well combined and crumbly.

Drizzle in the milk and combine. Use your hands to knead the dough a few times until it holds together, add an extra tablespoon of soy milk if needed. You should be able to form a pliable ball of dough.

Line a work surface with parchment. Place the dough on the parchment and work into a rectangle. Flatten a bit with the palms of your hand and sprinkle with flour. Use a rolling pin to roll into a rectangle that is roughly 10 x 14 inches. The dough should be about 1/8 inch thick. If the edges look crumbly, that’s okay.

Cut the edges off so that you have a relatively even 12 x 8 rectangle. Cut the dough into 8 crackers, to do this evenly use a sharp paring knife to slice the dough in half lengthwise and widthwise. Then cut widthwise again on either side of the center widthwise cut. That probably made it sound confusing, read it slowly.

Use a very thin flexible spatula to transfer the crackers to a baking sheet. It helps if you spray the spatula with cooking spray so that it slips on and off easily.

Gather up the scraps of dough and form them into a ball, then roll it out into a 4 by 8 rectangle, or whatever size you can manage. I was able to get 4 more crackers out of the deal, but your mileage may vary. Cut the edges evenly and slice into 4 crackers then transfer to the baking sheet.

Score each cookie with a fork 4 times in 2 columns. You don’t need to poke all the way through. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes. 14 will give you nice crispy crackers, 12 minutes will be better for making ice cream sandwiches.

Let cool completely on the baking sheet.