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Homemade Graham Crackers are simple to whip together with only 6 basic ingredients. Use your homemade graham crackers in other recipes, for making S’mores or just as a snack!
Homemade Graham Crackers
If you love S’mores you have got to try your hand at making Homemade Graham Crackers and then promptly making S’mores with those bad boys! Seriously, it takes the S’mores game up about 10 notches.
Making Graham Crackers from scratch is actually a really easy process. The dough is made just like roll and cut sugar cookies, actually. The most noticeable difference is the fact that they are made with whole wheat flour.
Where storebought graham crackers and homemade graham crackers have a lot of similarities and differences, most people who try the homemade version swear it’s better than the boxed stuff. It’s really hard to find a reason to go back to boxed once you see how fresh and flavorful the homemade version can be. Of course, once you try the recipe, you’ll see for yourself. 😉
Homemade Graham Cracker Recipe ingredients
- Butter: Use what you have on hand, I always use salted butter. If you are planning on using unsalted butter, I would suggest adding in a pinch of salt to the dough prior to baking.
- Brown Sugar: Brown sugar is the only sugar used in this recipe, keeping things very simple!
- Egg: two eggs, that’s it!
- Vanilla
- Baking Powder
- Whole Wheat Flour: This one is a must! Use whole wheat flour, not all purpose flour. These are not interchangeable in this recipe.
Graham Cracker Recipe Variations
- Add mini chocolate chips the graham crackers
- Add cocoa powder (you’ll want to remove some of the wheat flour if doing this) to make chocolate graham crackers
- Add some cinnamon into the mix!
How to make this recipe for Graham Crackers
Like I said earlier, making graham crackers is no harder than making sugar cookies. To create the dough, we will start by creaming together butter and brown sugar. You can do this with an electric hand mixer or stand mixer.
Once the butter and brown sugar are combined, scrape the sides of your bowl and add in an egg and vanilla extract. Mix until well combined. Lastly, whole wheat flour and baking powder are added. The dough should be soft and easy to work with. It should feel like a grainy play-doh. If the dough is too sticky, add a little more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time. If the dough is dry and cracks when rolling out, add in a little water, 1 tsp at a time.
Roll the dough out until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Use a rectangle cookie cutter or pizza cutter to cut out the rectangles. You can score the rectangles so they look similar to store bought graham crackers if you’d like. Poke holes with a fork to make them graham cracker-esque and this will help the crackers to not puff up while baking.
Bake on a greased cookie sheet or a parchment lined cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes. You’ll want the crackers to be stiff to the touch but not overly browned.
Allow the crackers to cool completely before removing from the pan.
What to make with Homemade Graham Crackers
- Make homemade smores
- Use the graham crackers for a pie or cheesecake crust
- Make ice cream sandwiches
- Use as a snack
How to store Homemade Graham Crackers
The Graham crackers need to be stored at room temperature, preferably in an air tight container or bag but that isn’t as important as room temperature. I generally toss them into a zip top bag and store them in my pantry.
Graham Crackers Recipe FAQs
This really depends on the size of graham cracker you are wanting to make. I made twelve 4″x 6″ rectangle graham crackers with some extra smaller edge graham crackers. Those are a lot larger than regular graham crackers. If you don’t need that many, feel free to half the recipe.
For this recipe, the flavor is from the brown sugar, vanilla and whole wheat flour. The recipe is balanced to be subtly sweet with great flavor.
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More Fun Summer Recipes:
- Berry Cheesecake Sugar Cookie Bars
- S’mores Muddy Buddy
- S’mores Bars
- Homemade Lemonade
- Magic Shell Recipe
- Red Velvet Cookies
Graham Cracker Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 3 cups whole wheat flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Cream together the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer until well combined.Scrape sides and add in vanilla and egg. Mix until combined.
- Add whole wheat flour and baking powder to the bowl. Mix slowly at first gradually getting faster until the dough comes together. The texture should be like Playdoh. Add a little flour or water if needed to get it to a soft, pliable consistency.
- Turn out onto a floured surface. Use a rolling pin and roll the dough out thin (think graham cracker thin.). The cookies will not rise while baking, they will not get thinner while baking. Roll out to your desired FINISHED thickness.
- Use cookie cutters or a pizza cutter to cut the dough into rectangles.
- Poke the rectangles with a fork.
- Transfer to a greased cookie sheet (or parchment lined). Bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes, you don't want these to start turning brown (burning) but you do want them to bake long enough so they are crackery. They should feel stiff if tapped while in the oven.
- Allow the crackers to cool completely before removing from pan.
Oh gosh. I can’t wait to make these! They look heavenly… Especially as s’mores 🤤😋 thanks, Karli!
I hope you love them, Karen!! ❤️
Good Saturday Morning! Excellent recipe. This is going to come out sounding technical rather than aesthetic in basis but believe me when I say technical virtuosity is secndary to aesthetic success, at least where baking and cooking are concerned. If the outcome is your interest, skip to where I start a sentence with ***. My modifications: I used 360 grams organic whole wheat flour b/c many sources suggest 1 cup whole wheat flour weighs 120 grams. I don’t believe that for a minute but the figure DOES give me something to use as a basis in assessment. I used organic cane sugar in lieu of brown sugar and manage to forget adding in the “required” molasses. I used unsalted butter because that is “my normal” and I added in 1/2 tsp fine sea salt to make up my idea of the difference. I cut the vanilla in half — at least in part because I have good, old-fashioned EXPENSIVE vanilla, and in part ’cause I’m not interested in the flavor of vanilla overwhelming everything. I used an Ankarsrum mixer with roller to make one batch of dough — now THERE was a challenge. (For those not famliar with the Ankarsrum mixer, I will note it doesn’t know how to do SMALL very well.) *** Outcome: The dough was a tad too soft. (I will try the refrigerated-dough trick on the next tiny baking from this singleton batch.) Flavor and texture: I haven’t yet gone back to the kichen to find one completely cool. Yet. Warm? Superb, and my African Grey parrots agree. // Karli, I have no idea how much energy, time, etc., you put into getting this recipe done this well, but I owe you about 1,000 karma point, or if you pefer a great thanks to our Blessed J with father in heaven, so if you wish, do consider this your first installment.
These are sooooo yummy! I’ve made them a few times now and most recently added a bit of cinnamon and they are such a hit with my kids!
I’ve made these twice and they are perfectly delicious!! Thank you for a wonderful recipe! We can’t wait to make s’mores!
Hi Karli! I just made this recipe a couple hours ago and they are fantastic. I made them exactly like your recipe and l you I used some of them in a bakeapple cheesecake and they are perfect. I also love the fact that they are 100% whole wheat. This is a keeper. Thank you so much for this recipe..