Crackers and Cookies

There is no way I could eat better unless I had a way to eat bad too. Does that even make sense? I am continuing to find brilliant recipes at that heavenlyhomemakers site and here's couple more winners.

Whole Wheat Honey Graham Crackers

2 ¼ cups whole wheat flour
½ cup rapadura or sucanat (dehydrated cane sugar juice) --If you don't have this stuff just try some organic sugar or brown sugar or regular if you have to)
1 t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
½ t. salt
¼ t. cinnamon
4 T. honey
¼ c. water
1 t. vanilla
1 stick butter, melted
(1/3 cup cocoa also if you want chocolate ones--and if you can never find chocolate animal crackers to make that pie crust--this would be amazing!)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt stick of butter in a pan on the stove. Set aside.
3. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
4. Add the liquids: honey, water, vanilla and melted butter. (Do not forget the water or the butter or anything else--I have done both, rolled it out, cursed the world when it was a pain in the rear to roll out, realized what I did, dumped it back in a bowl, remixed it, fixed it, and moved on)
5. Stir well until a nice ball of dough is formed.
6. Cut two pieces of Parchment paper the size of the cookie sheet.
7. Lay one piece of parchment paper on the cookie sheet.
8. Place the ball of dough on the parchment paper.
9. Lay the other piece of parchment paper (I will NOT waste a piece of parchment paper for this part--I just use wax paper) on top of the ball of dough. Squish dough down a little with your fist.
10. Use the rolling pin to roll the dough between the pieces of parchment paper. Roll until the dough covers the whole cookie sheet.
11. Remove the top piece of parchment paper (I haven't tried to cook these without the parchment paper on the bottom but I bet you could). Cut rolled dough into 2 inch squares, or cut shapes with cookie cutters, being sure to separate the shapes from the surrounding dough a little (also forgot this step several times--they are still edible as broken irregular shapes :-).
12. Bake in oven for 18 minutes.
13. Turn oven off, but leave crackers in the oven to get crisp.
14. Remove from oven after 30 minutes to one hour (I find 30 minutes is plenty on a jelly roll pan which makes pretty thick crackers). Break graham crackers apart.
15. Store in a air tight container.
**Update--I have tried to cook these on a regular Pam'd cookie sheet with no parchment paper--just throw all the ingredients in the trash and save yourself some time :-( As far as I'm concerned parchment paper is a MUST for cooking these and the vanilla wafers!

Now the bottom picture I have above is for the vanilla wafers that lady has a great recipe for also. I was going to bring them to church for my sunbeams and they didn't last a day...the sunbeams got goldfish again. Thank goodness we are moving soon because the sunbeams should really be weaned off snacks by now....
These are great cookies but since they have to crisp up in a turned off oven, they are a bit time consuming to make in batches.


Homemade Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sucanat or brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Cream butter and sucanat together. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder.

Plop down nickel size dough blobs on parchment paper covered cookie sheet. Bake at 325° for five to fifteen minutes. (This is a broad range of time, but each oven is different. Check them after five minutes to see how they’re doing!--this is the lady's advice--mine took 5 minutes) Turn off the oven and let the cookies sit inside for a half hour or so to crisp up.

Oh yeah, I have no pictures of it but I needed to get rid of another block of cream cheese and a bunch of apples so I used her recipe for apple dip that was so easy--8oz. softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup brown sugar (she used sucanat), 1/2 tsp. vanilla--beat well--holy cow it was good!!