Animal crackers

I embarked on a little baking adventure with Titus this afternoon. We made animal crackers (from my Kinder Krunchies cookbook) for an afternoon snack. It was pretty messy, and I had to work to control my adult perfectionistic tendencies and just let Titus do his thing ; ) But I think it was a fun project for both of us. Here is some photo documentation of the experience.

Titus mixing the dough with his hands

Cutting out shapes (we don't have any animal cookie cutters, so we just used the cookie cutters we had on hand)

The crackers before going into the oven

Titus helping to clean up : )

The crackers after being baked

I changed some things a little, so here is the recipe with my modifications.

Combine:

1/2 cup oatmeal (ground in a blender until fine)
6 TBSP whole wheat flour
6TBSP white flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda

Add 1 TBSP honey and stir well

Add 1/4 cup softened butter and use your hands to work the butter into the flour mixture until you have a crumbly, uniform mixture.

Add 1/4 cup buttermilk (I used regular milk with a splash of lemon juice added)

Turn onto a floured surface and roll very thin. My dough was pretty sticky, so I needed to incorporate a lot of flour to make it workable.

Cut out with cookie cutters, animal ones if you have them.

Bake at 400 degrees for 9 minutes (until slightly brown around the edges)


I thought these crackers turned out really well! They had an interesting texture from the oatmeal, and the honey gave them just a little sweetness. One recipe made about 50 little cookies for us, but I think you would get a higher yield if you weren't working with a messy one-year-old ; )