Fancy Toddler Crackers

The Recipe

Toddler crackers

Easy no machines needed roll and cut cookies that get their sweetness from maple syrup, powdered corn and whole wheat and oat flours. These are the fastest roll and cut cookies I've ever made and were a hit with the family littles, and they're nice with a cup of tea.

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Ingredients

  

• 60 g (½ cup) whole-wheat flour
• 55 g (½ cup + 2Tbsp) oat flour grind oats in a food processor to flour consistency.
• 28 g (¼ cup) powdered freeze dried corn (either grind whole freeze dried kernels in a food processor or spice grinder – or purchase as powder)
• 18 g (2 Tbsp) malted milk powder
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ⅛ tsp salt
• 75g g (⅓ cup) unsalted butter softened at room temperature – use stork baking block for vegan.
• 2 Tbsp milk For vegan use nut or grain milk of choice.
• 2 Tbsp maple syrup
• ½ tsp vanilla extract I used Princess Bakery flavour emulsion from LorAnn

Instructions

 

• Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/Fan 170°C and prep two baking sheets with parchment paper, and set these each onto another baking sheet. See Notes.
• Mix and sift the dry ingredients into a medium bowl
• Add the butter and the wet ingredients and mix together to form a dough. Hands are great for this task. If after a mix and a bit of a knead the dough still feels too crumbly add a little more milk, no more than 1 Tbsp until it comes together.
• Make a flattened disc of dough.
• Roll the dough between ⅛ and ¼ inch thick between two pieces of pieces of parchment paper or on a lightly floured counter.
• Cut out the dough with a cookie cutter and transfer to the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges.
• Remove from the oven, and leave to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then move the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Notes

– These don’t taste as nice if they’ve browned too much, baking them on 2 sheets will help keep the bottoms from browning too quickly. Once the edges and corners have started to brown, they’re done. 

– commenters on Yummy Toddler Food used coconut oil and “oil” for the butter successfully too.

– the dough is super forgiving I didn’t need to flour my cookie cutters and may ditch the parchment for rolling.. If its sticky, let it sit for 10 minutes or so or add flour a little at a time. 

– to simplfy the recipe, you can omit oat flour and use ~120-140 g whole wheat flour (about a cup) 

– cinnamon would be a nice addition in these.

The Waffle

This is another franken recipe. Part Yummy Toddler Food Blog and part BraveTart/Stella Parks. I liked the simplicity of the version on Yummy Toddler Food and those were a hit with the toddler in the family AND with our preschooler and heck, the adults didn’t turn them down either. I like that there’s no refined sugar and that its a whole-wheat cookie. Stella Parks had me intrigued by the freeze dried corn and malted milk powder combo and the King Arthur flour website has a recipe that mentions Princess Bakery flavour emulsion.

We found with the corn and malted milk powder – I’m not sure which ingredient causes it – the cookies went a bit bitter when browned, so baking them on a double baking sheet or keeping a close eye on them while baking is key.

They’re quick and easy, fun to make with our preschooler the make a nice treat to take to pickup and are just handy to have around.

I use all our mini cookie cutters, bee, fox, flour, nessie, letters and get about 50-70 cookies from a batch. Since they’re so small they store well in old jam jars on the kitchen counter.