A few years ago for Christmas, my husband bought me a Vitamix blender. Best. Christmas present. Ever. We enjoy making many things--soups, sauces, smoothies, scrambled green eggs...but since last year for Christmas my husband bought me the dry blade container and we found that we could purchase wheat berries from Whole Foods, so now we grind our own flour for making breads and other things too!
My kiddos came down with the flu two days ago, and as they started to recover and desire to eat again, I wanted to make them something wholesome like crackers. But we didn't have any crackers in the house because we've been cutting out processed foods from our diets. So I got a crazy idea to make homemade graham crackers for the kids.
I spent some time researching different recipes online, and after not finding any for freshly ground wheat, I adapted the one I liked the best from cupcakeproject.com.
Since my friends at @Vitamix on twitter asked, I thought I would share my recipe. Enjoy!
Preheat your oven to 350.
Grind 2 1/4 c wheat berries in your dry blade container, starting at variable 1, increasing to variable 10, turning on high and holding for about 30 seconds or until you don't see any whole berries anymore.
You can do the next part by hand, but this way is so much faster:
Add the freshly ground wheat to a food processor along with:
1/4 c cold unsalted butter cut into tabs
1 egg
6 T organic sugar
3 T raw honey
1 T dark molasses
3/4 t salt
1 t vanilla
2 t water
blend until it forms a ball. If it's not forming a ball, slowly add more water. If you add a bit too much water, add in a little more flour until you get the right consistency. (and if you accidentally added way too much water and then consequently had to add a lot more flour like I did, you just might have to add a little more sugar too. taste the dough at your own risk--mostly because you might come back for more!)
place a sheet of parchment paper on your counter and sprinkle with some finely ground flour
take about 1/3 of the dough, sprinkle with more finely ground flour, and roll out into a thin sheet (aim for about 1/8 of an inch deep)
cut with your favorite cookie cutter (get creative! homemade graham crackers don't have to be in squares!), place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, dust off any excess flour from the rolling process (because as you can clearly see, it doesn't magically disappear during the baking process :)), and add a few pricks with a fork
bake for 8 minutes at 350, flip, and then bake them for another 6 minutes (they might need another minute if you made them thicker)
remove from oven, and immediately transfer to a cooling rack. they will still be soft when you take them out of the oven, but they will harden after a minute or so of cooling.
now go try them! your kids are gonna love them! :) Read more...
