Gluten Free Graham Crackers (and some s'mores)

My coworker told me about Nanaimo Bars. How she met this guy who said that his family had the "family secret," and that no one could have the recipe.

I'm pretty sure she went home and googled it. Sorry about that "family secret," dude. Funny enough, it was also the January Daring Baker's Challenge. I just ended up eating all my grahams before I made the Nanaimo Bars. And I couldn't decide if I wanted mint filling or just buttercream.

I just couldn't stop thinking about what graham crackers tasted like. How much I loved to break them perfectly on their little scored lines, and smoosh them with peanut butter for a snack. Well, wait no more. There are some really good gluten free grahams out there.

I found a recipe from Cake and Commerce that even came with a video tutorial. It was so fascinating to watch Lindsey in her clean kitchen, putting together confections. I think I watched a good number of the videos. I also discovered that she bakes by weight, instead of our rather inaccurate system of cups and teaspoons.

I plugged in the computer USB scale (originally purchased to be able to easily calculate costs for shipping packages) and went to town. I actually really enjoyed baking with weights, and I feel like it was a successful recipe because I was precisely following the directions. I did manage to tweak them a bit, and have posted my edited directions.

Whether it's indoor s'mores, outdoor s'mores, pie crust, Nanaimo bars, or some other creation, these are perfect. I took them to work for my morning snack. I definitely didn't regret that one.

Gluten Free Graham Crackers
Adapted from Cake and Commerce, a tremendously wonderful gluten free blog
You will need a baking scale for this recipe.

6 oz buckwheat flour (really cheap at WinCo!)
2 oz teff flour
2 oz sweet rice flour
2 oz ground flax seed
2 oz brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sea salt

3 oz shortening, melted and slightly cooled
1/3 cup honey or agave
1/3 cup water, slightly warm
1 tablespoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor. In another bowl, combine wet ingredients together and mix until blended. Pour wet ingredients in food processor over dry ingredients. Pulse until well combined. The dough will be a slightly sticky mass.

Allow to sit for at least 30 minutes for the flour to absorb some of the liquid. Genius! Absolute genius!

If the dough is still wet, knead in a little more teff or buckwheat flour. It should NOT be wet to the touch.

Roll out to about 1/8th of an inch on a sheet of parchment. With a knife, score dough into a graham-cracker-sized grid (or cut with round cutters if looking for another look). Dock dough (make holes in dough) with a fork. Transfer to a sheet pan.

Brush the surface with water and sprinkle with sugar. Allow to sit for 5 minutes.

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until dry. Do not burn.

When they are still hot, use your knife to make the cuts again. Then you will have really nice, clean edges.

Cool.


S'mores

This part is pretty simple. You should probably have experience with this. Gather your ingredients first, including 2 pieces of graham cracker, a few marshmallows, and some milk chocolate. I managed to make mine with chocolate chips, but I do recommend a piece of chocolate bar, which comes conveniently scored for easy breaking.

First, turn on your electric stove. You'll need it pretty hot. Using a bamboo skewer, or even a fork, stab your marshmallow, and hold it over the hot stove. Be sure it gets close to the heating coil, but doesn't touch it (that makes fire!)

When they're light brown and puffy, you're done:

Slide your marshmallows off the skewer or fork, and load them onto the graham cracker, which should already have chocolate on it, waiting to receive your hot marshmallow.

Eat quickly. Lick the chocolate off your fingers.