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An easy recipe for Homemade Graham Crackers. Made with 100% whole wheat flour and brown sugar, these are so much better than store-bought crackers!
Homemade Graham Crackers are truly something special.
Yes, they are made with ingredients you know and recognize and are not “processed.” However, the flavor of homemade graham crackers is far superior to store-bought and totally worth the effort.
How do you make Graham Crackers?
Graham crackers, like many cookies, are made with the creaming method. This means you cream softened fat (butter or shortening) in a mixer with sugar until it is pale in color and fluffy.
Then, add your remaining wet ingredients (in this case, milk, honey and vanilla) and your dry ingredients.
Scrape your dough and knead by hand before forming into two large rectangles. Score the dough before baking, but otherwise leave it uncut.
Bake the crackers until darkened, then break along the score lines.
Or, you can use a pizza wheel to cut out any shapes you want.
Store the baked graham crackers in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks. Or, freeze the crackers for up to 3 months.
Homemade Graham Crackers
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat flour plus more for dusting (not stone-ground or white whole white flour)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 7 tablespoons butter softened
- 1 cup light brown sugar packed
- 3 tablespoons whole milk
- 1/3 cup honey
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
To make the dough:
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
- In a standing mixer fit with the paddle attachment, or with an electric hand mixer, cream butter and sugar together.
- Increase speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture until incorporated and a soft dough forms, about 2 minutes.
- Add the milk, honey and vanilla extract. The dough should be sticky and soft.
- Divide the dough in two discs and wrap both in plastic and chill for at least one hour.
To roll and bake the dough:
- Adjust oven rack to the middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously flour your counter or a piece of parchment paper and place one ball of dough in the center.
- Pat into a 5-by-6-inch rectangle, sprinkle with flour, flip, and dust again, Working from the center out and adding more flour as needed, roll the dough until roughly 15-by-11 inches and very thin. Slide onto am aluminum baking sheet and brush away excess flour. Repeat with remaining dough.
- For grocery store look-alike, score each sheet of dough into twelve 2 1/4-by-4 3/4-inch rectangles and dock with a bamboo skewer or the narrow end of a chopstick. Otherwise leave the dough uncut.
- Bake until crackers and firm and darkened, about 10-12 minutes. Immediately cut along the pre-scored lines with a knife, or cut into free-form shapes using a pizza wheel. Cool to room temperature directly on the baking sheets.
- The graham crackers can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks at room temperature or frozen for up to 3 months.
Recipe Video
Notes
Nutrition
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Meggan Hill is the Executive Chef and CEO of Culinary Hill, a popular digital publication in the food space. She loves to combine her Midwestern food memories with her culinary school education to create her own delicious take on modern family fare. Millions of readers visit Culinary Hill each month for meticulously-tested recipes as well as skills and tricks for ingredient prep, cooking ahead, menu planning, and entertaining. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the iCUE Culinary Arts program at College of the Canyons.
Super yummy! With the unreasonable price of graham crackers, along with other things, I’m making them at home. I’ve struggled to judge the right time and worry about burning them, but they’re good a little soft anyhow. I’ve also made them with maple syrup instead of honey, which is really good.
Based on other reviewers comments that these cookies were potentially too soft/chewy, and also too sweet, I made the following recipe modifications, with very good results:
Reduced the light brown sugar to 3/4 of a cup.
Reduce the honey to 1/4 cup.
Add an extra pinch of salt (I was using unsalted butter).
Baked them at 330° for about 16 minutes.
They came out quite crispy and delicious— sweet enough but not cookie-sweet. I plan to use most of them for s’mores at a party, but they would be equally good with coffee or as a snack. Somewhere in between a commercial
gram cracker (but much better) and a crisp Christmas sugar cookie.
Don’t recommend, these don’t come out like graham crackers. Mine were sticky and moist, even after drying. In the oven they puff up and when you take it out they flatten.
A good cookie but a little too too sweet for a graham cracker.
I tried this recipe today but my crackers are chewy, not like a graham cracker should me. Taste great, but what am I doing wrong?
Hi Allison, I’m so sorry about that. They may have needed some more time in the oven. Do you have an oven thermometer inside the oven? Also, the graham crackers will dry out some more as they cool. How did they turn out once cooled? Sorry again! – Meggan
Which brand whole wheat flour you.recommend?
I have tried and compared a few different Graham Cracker Recipes and this one is by far the most amazing and delicious! I planned to just make them for my toddler and they have now become mine and my husbands favorite thing to partner with our coffee.
Thank you, Hanna! So glad you and your husband love it! – Meggan