Recipe: Honey Oat Crackers

Crackers are a toddler staple, right? Right.

But I’m still being that mom who scowls at ingredient lists on grocery store boxes, so I got on Pinterest to get some help making crackers that aren’t loaded with hydrogenated things and lots of sugar and food dyes and “natural” flavors. With a couple tweaks on one recipe I found, we ended up with these really yummy honey oat crackers.

Bullets:

• 1/2 C rolled oats
• 3/4 C whole wheat flour
• 2 Tbsp dried honey*
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon, or to taste**
• 4 Tbsp butter, cold
• 3 Tbsp honey
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 2 Tbsp water

Numbers: 

1. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in butter.
2. In a small bowl, mix honey, vanilla and water.
3. Whisk dry goods constantly, while drizzling in the wet mixture until the dough is evenly moist.
4. Wrap in a wet tea towel (or kitchen towel) and place in the fridge for at least an hour. ***
5. Roll out very thin on parchment paper, cut and bake until the edges start to turn golden brown, about 13 minutes. ****
6. Cool on a wire rack and enjoy!

* The original recipe called for sugar, but I’ve been substituting dried honey granules for sugar in baking stuffs. I get it from the honey vendor at our local farmer’s market, and I recently saw it in one of our local grocery stores. It’s out there. It’s worth the hunt, but if you don’t have it – or you don’t care – this can be sugar. (Or whatever you substitute for sugar.)

** The original called for a “pinch,” but I think I dropped at least a 1/4 teaspoon. Cinnamon is yummy. Mine definitely have a slight cinnamon flavor, and I’m not sure if you’d taste it at all with any less.

*** Like most pastry instructions, this calls for wrapping in plastic and refrigerating. But we know that plastic leeches endocrine disrupters into food, so we try not to use it. I did some research to see if I really needed to refrigerate the dough in the first place, and was convinced Yes. But I also found a bunch of testimonies from other bakers who wrap their dough in a wet tea towel to put in the fridge. The plastic keeps the dough from drying out while the chill does it’s magic, so wetting the towel makes it heavier and tighter against your dough and helps it maintain moisture. Worked like a charm.

**** If you don’t have parchment paper, you can try rolling it out on a floured surface too. I tried that first, but this stuff is really sticky and no amount of flour would help me peel my crackers up neatly. Also, they will not be crisp in the oven. The original said to wait until they were firm, but I burnt the first batch doing that. The next two I pulled out just as the edges started to get dark, with the middles still a little soft. They hardened up on the cooling rack and they’re perfect.

Husband likes them. Meatball likes them. I feel good about what’s in them. All these crackers do is win.