Allow me to introduce you to Anchorage Alaskan ladies Mama Alison and her daughter and mini-chef, Meredith. Alison runs and owns Rise and Shine Bakery with her husband, Dan, where they bake gorgeous sourdough breads. You can see them hanging out at the Farmers Market in the warmer days, and cozying up in an Anchorage coffee shop now that it’s starting to get chilly.
Alison also cooks and writes her way through a lovely blog: Alison’s Lunch in which she chronicles her many gorgeous veggie lunches. I’m happy to say that she spent a little quality time over the weekend with her mini-chef and their plethora of cookie cutters making a gorgeous, healthful snack. On a side note, it’s heartening to see that we’re not the only ones with a bit of a cookie cutter collecting problem. Thanks, Alison and Meredith!
Alison:
I inherited a lot of cookie cutters from my mom. I have shapes for Halloween, shapes for Valentine’s Day and Christmas and Easter and St. Patrick’s Day, animal shapes, geometric shapes, and even shapes for Election Day (elephants and donkeys). I have A LOT of cookie cutters. I also inherited her desire to collect more cookie cutters, which is a little strange, because I rarely make cut-out sugar cookies.
But when my daughter Meredith turned two years old and began participating in some cooking projects, I got really nostalgic about making those roll-out sugar cookies with my mom. Of course, I also remembered how much cookie dough I ate during those sessions. I decided to try and develop a healthier recipe that I wouldn’t mind making often, and that I didn’t care if Meredith ate by the handful. This whole-wheat graham cracker recipe was born! It uses oil instead of butter, 100% whole wheat flour, and doesn’t call for eggs.
Your kids can help you measure the ingredients, mix the dough, and practice rolling out a small piece of dough while you roll out the rest. Then they can help cut out the crackers and decorate them with all kinds of toppings-nuts, seeds, dried fruit, chocolate chips… anything you like!
These crackers are fun to make, are pretty darn healthy, and have a nice, slightly sweet and whole-wheaty flavor. They definitely aren’t as sweet as cookies, though. Which makes them nice with tea, and great for s’mores. (When we’re making them for s’mores, I cut them into squares with a pizza cutter and then then make fork-pricks in them to look like the store-bought kind.)
Meredith loves making these, so now I have an excuse to collect even more cookie cutters! My most recent acquisitions? Letter shapes! We especially love to make initials of our friends, and then march around the neighborhood to deliver them.
graham cracker cut-outs
These crackers aren’t very sweet, so if you want them sweeter, you could substitute more maple syrup or honey for part of the soy milk. I love the combination of roasted walnut oil (Loriva brand is pretty easy to find) and maple syrup, or roasted peanut oil with honey. The nut oil adds a really nice richness to the crackers, but you can just use canola if that’s all you have.
You can use all whole-wheat pastry flour for this recipe, which makes a nice, tender cracker, but makes the rolling out a little bit hard, since there isn’t much gluten in pastry flour. It works fine, though, if you’re patient and don’t expect the same consistency as regular sugar cookie dough. I have had better luck using half whole-wheat pastry flour and half whole-wheat bread flour (or just use regular all-purpose whole wheat flour).
After I roll out the dough once, the dough scraps get a little tougher to work with, so I generally just roll them out and cut the remains up with a pizza cutter into square-ish shapes.
crackers
*1/2 c. milk or soy milk
*1 t. fresh lemon juice or vinegar
*1/4 c roasted nut oil, or canola oil
*1/3 c. honey or maple syrup
*2 1/2 c. sifted whole wheat flour, plus more as needed
*1/2 t. baking soda
*1/2 t. baking powder
*1/4 t. sea salt
decoration ideas
*black and/or golden raisins (you can soak them in water to plump them up)
*dried cherries
*dried cranberries
*nuts (peanuts, almonds)
*seeds (green pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds)
*chocolate chips
*crystallized ginger pieces
1. Combine milk and lemon juice, set aside for a few minutes to curdle. In a small bowl, whisk the oil and sweetener together, and whisk in the curdled milk.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in the liquid mixture. Stir gently until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and balls up in the center. You might have to add extra flour, or if you’re using whole wheat bread flour, you might need to add a little more milk.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease baking sheets if they are not non-stick. Using a rolling pin on a floured surface, and using more flour as necessary on the top of the dough, and on the rolling pin, roll out the dough about 1/8 inch thick. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Re-roll the scraps and cut more shapes out. Arrange them on sheets.
4. If you want to decorate them, spray lightly with water with a sprayer bottle (this helps the nuts to stick) and go crazy with the toppings.
5. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp. Transfer crackers to racks and cool them before storing in a tightly closed tin.
