So. I’ve been in Australia about a month now and here’s the food scoop:

1. Tim Tams are the shit. Pardon the language but there’s no other way to word it. The grocery store sells a mini pack of them which has 5 cookies in them and seriously, I downed about 1 of those things a day when I first got here. Since then, I no longer can fit into any of my clothes so you know, I’m trying to cool it but they. are. good.

2. Australia does not have marshmallows, fluff, good peanut butter (despite rumors, they DO have pb, just none without sugar), vegan ice cream in the grocery store, canned pumpkin (serious, this is absolutely killing me), their oreos taste weird, black beans are hard to find and graham crackers don’t exist.

It’s been a rough month.

But I have prevailed! (Mostly with copious amounts of Tim Tams).

Truthfully, I can live without most this stuff but the hardest was graham crackers! Or canned Pumpkin. But this post is about graham crackers so let’s go with that for now. I really love graham crackers with Teddy’s pb and mini vegan chocolate chips. It’s hands down one of my favorite snacks. But seeing as they didn’t have graham crackers and I haven’t found mini chocolate chips (especially vegan ones), I’ve had to get creative.

Enter, the homemade graham cracker!

Oh She Glow’s Vegan Graham Crackers
from Oh She Glows,

DRY

• 3/4 cup + 1 tbsp whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup white flour
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/8th tsp ginger
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8th tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• Turbinado sugar or coarse sugar, for garnish

WET

• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Modified flax egg: 1/2 tbsp ground flax + 1 tbsp warm water
• 3.5 tbsp almond milk
• 2 tbsp pure maple syrup
• 3 tbsp blackstrap molasses

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350F (175C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a non-stick mat.

In a small bowl or cup mix together the modified flax egg: 1/2 tbsp ground flax and 1 tbsp warm water. Set aside for 5 minutes so it can gel up.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients and make sure everything is combined very well.

In a small bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients, including the flax egg, but give the flax egg a good stir before mixing it in.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir well with a spoon and then set the spoon aside and get in there with your hands and squeeze the dough together with your fingers.

Form the dough into a ball and place it on a very lightly floured counter. Be sure not to use too much flour or it will dry out the dough. Lightly flour a rolling pin and begin rolling out the dough until you have a rectangle that is about 1/8 inch thick. You want to roll it as thin as you can while still being able to remove it from the surface. The dough tends to crack in the initial rolling stages (and this was true for all different trials of the recipe), but I found that once I worked with it more it began to hold together better. If the dough cracks for you, you can form it into a ball again and restart the rolling process if need be. Sometimes I just patch cracks with another piece of dough and press it into the crack. Don’t worry because they don’t need to be perfect!

Once your dough is rolled out you can use cookie cutters, a pizza slicer/pastry slicer, or even a knife to cut the shapes you want.

Now pull away the scrap dough around the edges and set aside. Using a flat spatula/pancake flipper, carefully slide it underneath each cracker and place the cracker onto the baking sheet about 1 inch apart.

Grab your scrap dough and roll it out and repeat the cookie cutting process. Place onto baking sheet.

Now grab a fork and pierce each cracker a few times so it has air holes.

Sprinkle with turbinado sugar (or coarse sugar/white sugar) and bake for approx 15 minutes, rotating the pan 180 degrees half way through the baking time. There is no need to flip the crackers during baking. Baking time will vary depending on how thick your crackers are, so keep that in mind.

Allow the crackers to cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes. They will firm up quite a bit

I was super impressed with this recipe. The graham crackers were nice and crunchy and were’t too sweet, which is exactly what I was looking for. The molasses really stuck out though, which was a little different from the store kind. I don’t know how they would taste with s’mores (hint send graham crackers in care package hint) but I really enjoyed them as a snack with pb.

I actually had to squirrel these away on my side of the cabinet behind some boxes so the kids wouldn’t eat them. Sorry kids! You can have the store brand cookies. These homemade treats are for me!