Peanut Butter Sandwich Graham Crackers
This month's Recipe ReDux theme is....
Have Snacks. Will Travel:
Sometimes, the food is the best part of the journey. Be it business travel or a road trip for pleasure, share your favorite travel snacks/mini meals. Do you pack a special treat for the road to eat in the car or at rest stops? Or do you have a tried & true snack that makes it safely through airport security? Share your healthy recipe for road trip nourishment.
I admit, I was a bit stumped. When it comes to travel snacks, I usually just pack up a bunch of KIND bars and call it a day. I considered making a Cheez-It cracker knockoff as they are a "treat" at the beach for my 6 year old daughter (who uses my floppy hat as a snack vessel and wears a towel over her head to ward off the aggressive seagulls.)
But after staring in my pantry one day, I saw the hoards of boxes box of Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, which are a snack staple in our house and always accompany us on family trips, and I decided to take a stab at them. Then I remembered fellow Recipe ReDuxer, Annemarie @ Real Food Real Deals' recipe for homemade grahams from her Grown-Up Mascarpone S'mores post and figured why not mesh the two recipe ideas? (Just an aside, you must try her original recipe - so good.)
Peanut Butter Sandwich Graham Crackers
- Yield: 5 dozen sandwich crackers 1x
Description
Homemade mini graham crackers are a cinch to make and are a tasty kid's snack to use to make Peanut Butter Sandwich Graham Crackers
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cup white whole wheat flour
- ⅓ cup whole wheat pastry flour
- ⅓ cup wheat germ
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 2 tablespoons peanut butter
- ⅓ cup honey
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 - 2 tablespoons water
- 5 tablespoons peanut butter (for "sandwich" spread)
Instructions
- To make crackers, preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- In a small bowl, mix together flours, wheat germ, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
- In a large bowl, mix together butter, 2 tablespoons peanut butter, honey, vanilla extract. Add dry ingredients and mix until a dough ball is form. Add a tablespoon or two of water if dough is too dry and crumbly.
- On a piece of parchment, roll dough out into ¼-inch thickness into a 12x10-inch rectangle. Use a pizza cutter or knife to cut into 1x1-inch square crackers. Pierce with fork tines for decoration.
- Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet and bake in oven for 10 minutes.
- Re-cut the crackers and cool completely on a wire rack.
- To make sandwich crackers, spread ¼ teaspoon of peanut butter on one cracker and top with another cracker. Repeat until all crackers are used.
- Store in a plastic bag or container in a cool, dry place
Notes
Crackers adapted from Annemarie @ Real Food Real Deals' Grown-Up Mascarpone S'mores recipe
Turns out the baking time is nothing (10 minutes) and if you are well versed in making roll & cut-out cookies, these crackers pretty much follow the same process. Granted, if you made them bigger than my 1 x 1-inch mini size, spreading that peanut butter and making them into "sandwiches" would certainly go faster.
But they wouldn't be as cute, right?
Admittedly, these may not be the best snack for plane travel if there happens to be a passenger with a peanut allergy (something our own Regan Jones ran into on a return flight from Alaska when the main snack she had for her 7 year old was PB&J.) My daughter's camp is peanut free this year so we've been getting use to sunflower butter, which would be an easy ingredient swap into this recipe.
What snacks do you usually pack when you travel - either homemade or store-bought?
As always, I love your photos. And this recipe looks amazing. So much whole grain goodness 🙂
Thanks Liz - I'm loving your idea of using Ball jars for travel snacks!
These look wonderful! I may need to drop what I'm doing today to try them. Thanks so much for your kind words about the original graham cracker recipe.
Thank you for the original inspiration! I was surprised to learn that there is no graham flour in graham crackers 🙂
I love peanut butter. These are a wonderful healthy bite size treat. Great idea. With peanut butter it's always a winner yum!
I'm with you - I always have 2 -3 "back up" jars of Trader Joe's peanut butter in my pantry - can't ever imagine being without it 🙂
These are so cute. I recently bought a jar of almond butter from Trader Joes. This this would be a good flavor variation.
I'd love to try these with different nut butters.
i could eat my weight in peanut butter smothered graham crackers as a kid. you've just solidified my thoughts of creating a gluten-free version!
If anyone can create a delicious, gluten-free version of a graham cracker, it's you for sure, Gretchen 🙂
Hmmm, I've never tried making my own graham crackers, but I've always wondered about it. And now you come up with a peanut butter graham cracker? I must make it!
Seriously, I was surprise how easy they are to make! If you can make cookies, you can easily make crackers 🙂
You know anything with peanut butter calls my name! These look great, and I am so impressed with the precision of them. Love the velcro sandwich bag too - gotta find those!
A pizza cutter helps make them look uniformly cut 🙂 And those sandwich bags are called Lunchskins - you must stock up on them especially when the twins start eating lunch at school!
I've been curious about these bags. How easy are they to clean? Just wipe out with soap and water?
Ann - you can put them in the dishwasher! I should be a spokesperson for Lunchskins - big fan of them. They are sturdy too - have had some for over 2 years now and still use them.
One of my favorite snacks are honey flavored Teddy Grahams. Yes, I am still a kid at heart ;). Peanut butter anything is bound to be heavenly. I love that these crackers don't have to bake in the oven for too long. Don't need to add more heat to this triple digit weather. I've never tried sunflower butter. How do you like it?
Ahh, yes, I forgot about Teddy Grahams! And I too was surprised that you only had to bake these crackers for 10 minutes (score!) As for the sunflower butter, I like the taste of sunflower seeds so while it's not peanut butter, it actually has a pleasant taste.
These look lovely! I keep wanting to try my hand at making my own graham crackers. I so need to do this!
I'll never look at HS hospital snacks the same! I am so impressed that you made your own graham crackers! I always shy away from breads, crackers, etc. Love the snack pouch, too. We have the same ones..love them.
Huge huge fan of lunchskins 🙂 See you tomorrow, lady!
I love peanut butter on graham crackers! And I keep meaning to make my low carb, GF ones and maybe dip them in chocolate. How does THAT sound? 😉
OMG - dip them in chocolate?? Brilliant!
I usually carry some snacks while I am traveling. I cant believe you made these - looks so good 🙂
Wow, these look like they were made in a bakery! Love how you didn't reinvent the wheel, just modified Annemaire's terrific recipe! BTW, mentioned you were making cinnamon sugar biscotti to my husband, he wants that combination next!
Let me know how the cinnamon sugar turn out! I just do a basic biscotti recipe, add a little cinnamon to the dough and then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar before baking (also called snickerdoodle biscotti - definitely my most requested biscotti 'flavor' 🙂
Such a fun idea and so coincidental because I JUST bought a box of those TJ PB crackers for my kids to eat on the sleepover we did last night at nature preserve with our friends 🙂 I have a recipe for gluten-free graham crackers and would love to make these yummy treats with them. LOVE the hat filling in as a snack bowl-genius!
These look terrific, great for school lunches!!
These are so adorable! Peanut butter is one of my absolute favorite things, and graham crackers + PB is one of my all-time favorite snacks! I will be trying these out very very soon 🙂