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Even as a child, I’ve enjoyed graham crackers…and I love graham crack crusts in cheese cakes and pies. Thing is, this particular recipe does not contain graham flour. However, it is flexible in terms of flavorings: Although I almost always use cinnamon, you can also throw in ginger powder, cloves, allspice, cardamon, or whatever spices would suit your fancy.

Adapted from the great grahams recipe in Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies (2010).

Ingredients

• 3 ounces rolled oats
• 6 ounces whole wheat flour
• 1 ounce buckwheat flour
• 1 1/4 ounces dark brown sugar
• 1/2 ounce vanilla sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• (optional) 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• (optional) 1/4 teaspoon cloves, allspice, and/or cardamom
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 ounces (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, sliced into 8 to 16 chunks
• 3 to 4 tablespoons honey
• 2 to 3 tablespoons milk

Method

1. Grind the oats in a food processor. It doesn’t have to be fine — as rough as fine cornmeal works. I usually pulse the processor for 10 to 30 seconds a few times.
2. Add the other two flours, dark brown sugar, vanilla sugar, cinnamon, any optional spices, salt, and the baking powder and soda to the food processor. Briefly pulse a few times to mix.
3. Add the butter, then pulse the mixture until it looks somewhere between tiny lentils and rough cornmeal. I usually do this in 10 second pulses.
4. In a small jug, stir the honey into the milk until it dissolves.
5. Pour the honey-milk into the spinning processor — until the dough just starts to form a single lump
6. Empty the dough onto a sheet of parchment paper. Place another sheet of parchment on top, then press the dough into a square about 3/4 to 1-inch thick. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or overnight.
7. Preheat the oven to 350ºF degrees.
8. Take out the chilled dough, then roll it out to fit into an 8 or 9-inch square pan. (I prefer thicker cookies, so I use an 8-inch pan.)
9. Keeping the dough on one of the parchment sheets, fit it into a pan. Score the dough into a grid of 16 squares, then poke each one twice with a fork, as in the above photo.
10. Place the pan in the oven, lower the temperature to 325ºF, and bake until the edges are a dark brown — about 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in the pan at least 5 minutes before removing them and breaking them apart along the scored lines. Cool further on a rack; store when the cookies have reached room temperature.