Good day! I hope that this blog post finds you doing well. I have been trying some new recipes over the past few weeks and trying to keep up with all of the CSA produce that I receive each week. The weather this summer seems to be conducive to leafy green vegetables, which always make my day. Now that the temperature is heating up, corn, tomatoes, and beans are plentiful.
I have also been working on a baking project – how to make pies without refined sugars. The fillings can be challenging because it can be tricky to get the correct consistency. And I have not been able to use any graham cracker crust recipes because virtually all call for crumbled store-bought graham crackers – and I have not been able to find a brand without sugar. So I had to take a more proactive approach in order to bake a sugar-free crust.
SensitiveHusband recently purchased a lovely cookbook for me called Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese. The author has made dozens of popular foods and calculated how much it costs to create them homemade, and then compared the cost of similar store-bought items. Based on the difficulty of the homemade preparation and the cost, the author then recommends either making the item or buying it. Fortunately she includes a recipe for honey graham crackers. According to her calculations, homemade graham crackers cost approximately $0.18 per ounce, Honey Maid Cinnamon Grahams are $0.23 per ounce, and Annie’s organic graham crackers are $0.53 per ounce.
I adapted the recipe to remove the refined sugars by replacing with coconut palm sugar, and figured out how to roll into two crusts rather than shape into crackers (although you could still use this recipe for crackers). This recipe yields the lightest and tastiest graham cracker crust – the best I have ever sampled. SensitiveHusband agreed that this crust is terrific.
Step 1 for baking pies is having a great crust, and the recipe delivers. This is definitely more labor-intensive than purchasing a box of graham crackers, but the taste of the homemade version is worth it.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup coconut palm sugar
1/4 cup honey
Preparation:
1. Stir together the flours, wheat germ, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon in a medium bowl.
2. In another bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and honey until fluffy. Add the dry ingredients and stir well. Turn the dough onto a floured surface, knead once or twice, then flatten into a disk. Wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight.
3. Cut the dough into two portions. On a floured surface, roll one portion of the dough into a circle that is about 1/8 inch thick. Transfer to a pie plate and remove any dough that hangs over the sides. Prick the dough with a fork in a number of places throughout the dough. Repeat this process with the other portion of remaining dough.
4. Bake the two crusts in an oven that has been preheated to 350 degrees F for about 12 minutes or until very lightly browned. Make sure the crusts are completely cooled before moving onto creating your pie fillings.
SensitiveEconomist 