These delicious Wholemeal Honey Biscuits, or Crackers are simply delicious. They are a homemade version of Graham Crackers. Graham crackers are made with Graham flour, which is a course wholewheat/wholemeal flour. That special flour is not readily available in the UK.
Graham crackers are very popular in the USA and Canada, just as a cookie or crumbed as a pie base. They are also used in making Smores. Those crackers are not readily available in the UK. But, since I want to make a Canadian recipe, Nanaimo Bars, which use Graham crackers I decided to make my own.
For the homemade version a combination of wholemeal/wholewheat flour and plain flour will work well.
Having done a test and tasted the biscuits/cookies, I was delighted with how they tasted. So much so that I thought I would make them again, for the blog.
To me they are perfect just as a biscuit/cookie. Similar, perhaps, to digestive biscuits, but also different.
The inclusion of a little honey adds a great flavour to the nuttiness of the wholemeal flour.
So although, when I do the Nanaimo Bar recipe, I will suggest using crushed digestives I will have some homemade Graham crackers that I can use.
I checked so many recipes for the biscuits, or crackers, with varying ratios of different flours. Some also used other ingredients that I have excluded, such as eggs and ground cinnamon. I kept my recipe simple. Using fairly basic ingredients and making enough dough for about 24 biscuits/crackers.
I did make one cracker shaped as a Graham Cracker, just for demonstration purposes. But the remainder I just cut out with a round cookie cutter.
I chilled my dough twice. Once after rolling out and again whilst preheating the oven. Then I baked the biscuits/crackers.
My Bake
My biscuits/crackers baked perfectly in about 13 minutes. I left them on the baking tray for 5 minutes. Then I transferred them to a wire rack to cool completely.
After that they were crisp, with a very nice snap to them when broken in half.
The taste was wonderful. The inclusion of honey with the nutty flavour of wholemeal/wholewheat four really worked well. The biscuits/crackers had such a great crunch to them too. I found them perfect just as a biscuit to enjoy with tea. In fact I found them rather addictive.
I also crushed some to check that too, and they certainly create a very light crumb to use in other recipes.
So, my final thoughts are that these are great. It isn’t necessary to go to all the effort to fully replicate the shape of a Graham Cracker, unless they will be used for making smores, or other items that need that shape.
Another very easy biscuit recipe is Cornish Fairings – Quick & Easy.
Wholemeal Honey Biscuits – Crackers
Course: Biscuits, CookiesCuisine: North AmericanDifficulty: Easy24
servings30
minutes13
minutesIngredients
120g(1 cup minus 3 tbsp) wholemeal(wholewheat) flour
65g(1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp, based on scooping packed flour into a 250ml cup) plain flour
65g(1/3 cup) caster sugar
98g(7 tbsp) cold unsalted butter, cubed
30ml(2 tbsp) milk – you may not need it all
1.5g(1/4 tsp) salt
1g(1/4 tsp) baking powder
1g(1/4 tsp) baking soda
20g(1 tbsp) honey
2.5 ml(1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions
- Line a couple of baking trays with parchment paper
- Mix the flours, salt, baking soda and baking powder together.
- Put that mixture into a food processor and add the butter, then process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs(this can be done manually too, rubbing between fingertips).
- Add the honey and vanilla extract and most of the milk(hold back a tsp or so to add later if needed).
- Process the mixture until it starts to clump together into a dough.
- Tip the mixture out and form into a ball, and then divide into two for ease of use.
- Lay a sheet of parchment paper on a work surface and sprinkle with wholemeal flour.
- For each half of the dough, place it onto the flour and turn it over to coat both sides with a little flour.
- Cover with another sheet of parchment paper
- Roll out the dough to about 24-25 cm(9 1/2 to 10 inch) square. It doesn’t have to be neat.
- Use a cookie cutter of about 7cm(2.5 inches) to cut out shapes(you can re-roll the excess later).
- Transfer the parchment paper with the dough, onto a baking tray and chill for at least 30 minutes.
- Take the chilled and rolled dough from the fridge and use the blunt end of a wooden skewer to make a pattern on each cut out biscuit/cracker.
- Transfer each biscuit/cracker onto a parchment lined baking tray.
- Place the trays into the fridge to chill as you preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F
- When the oven has reached the temperature bake the cookies, on the trays, for 12 to 14 minutes, until the edges just begin to colour.
- Remove the biscuits/crackers from the oven and leave on the trays for 5 minutes. Then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
I must make some one of these days just to see if they taste like Graham Wafers…. they probably taste better…..