A pantry staple, the humble graham cracker, is transformed into Honey Soy Sesame Graham Crackers, with a salty-sweet coating of honey, soy sauce, and toasted sesame seeds, and a satisfying, crunchy-chewy texture.
These addictive morsels came to me early one morning while I was lying in bed half asleep thinking ( or was it dreaming?) about different tastes and textures that I love.
What could I do, I asked myself, to create something totally different out of something I always have on hand — graham crackers?
I got to remembering something my parents used to love with their evening coctail. It was an Asian party nibble that was like an airy pretzel with a shiny, sweet, soy sauce coating.
That got me to thinking about the fried sesame sticks my parents also noshed on at cocktail time. These were sort of like straight, short, crispy little versions of the fried noodles in a can people enjoy with chow mein, only these seemed covered in toasted sesame seed dust.
You can see where all this thinking was going, and later that day, I experimented with all those flavors and textures. The result is something that exceded my expectations. These are somewhat unique in that they never acheive total crispiness, nor to they become totally chewy.
For me, these Honey Soy Sesame Graham Crackers satisfy a hankering for several different things all-in-one. The sweet chew of a granola bar, the familiar honey and vanilla comfort of a graham cracker, and even the salty, toasted nut, and nougatiness of my favorite peanut, milk chocolate, and nougat candy bar, minus the chocolate of course (and I don’t miss it with these).
You’ll want to line up all your ingredients in advance.
You break each cracker sheet in two, dip the tops in a honey and soy sauce mixture, and while the top is still slick with the honey mixture, “cement” toasted sesame seeds* to the top of each cracker.
It’s important to do one batch of 9 crackers at a time (the recipe makes 18 cracker halves — which is 1 wrapped sleeve of graham crackers). Doing more at once, could result in a cracker more chewy than crunchy and you want each cracker to sport both textures. By the way, ideally, the crackers should be baked farther apart than the picture above might suggest. Give ’em about 1 1/2 inches of space between one another.
I hope you find this recipe for Honey Soy Sesame Graham Crackers a nice change of pace — fun and a little different. Please use the Comments section below to share your thoughts.
| Prep Time | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | 10 minutes |
| Passive Time | 24 minutes |
| Servings |
servings (3 halves per serving)
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- 9 full cracker sheets (1 'sleeve') honey graham crackers (for testing purposes, I used Nabisco Honey Made Grahams)
- 3 tablespoons mild honey
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds (I used Organic Toasted Sesame Seeds - Unhulled)
- 1 tablespoon toasted black sesame seeds (I used Organic Black Toasted Sesame Seeds - Unhulled)
Ingredients
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- Preheat oven to 325° F.
- Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with a silicone baking mat each.
- Break each cracker sheet in half (to create two 2 1/4" X 2 1/4" squares). You will wind-up with 18 of these. It's easier to break the cracker sheet in half top-side down (holes down) — I don't know why, but it is — you'll get fewer ragged edges. Set aside on a plate.
- In a large, shallow bowl, thoroughly combine the honey and soy sauce.
- In a small bowl, combine the sesame seeds.
- Working quickly, dip half the cracker halves (9) top-side down in the honey-soy mixture (you're coating the tops only), place top-side up 1 1/2 inches apart on one baking mat, and sprinkle with half the sesame seeds. The point here is to get the seeds on top of the cracker halves while the honey mixture is still wet on top of each cracker half. The honey will then act as 'glue' to 'set' the seeds during baking.
- Bake the 9 crackers for 10 minutes. Remove rimmed baking sheet from oven and let the crackers rest 2-3 minutes on the hot pan before gently removing them, with a cake-turner, to a wire rack to cool completely, about 20 minutes. Be careful with them while they're hot as they will be soft and almost cake-like until they cool and harden.
- Once you remove the first pan from the oven, and have the first 9 crackers cooling on a wire rack, Repeat the same process with the other 9 halves.
- Don't be tempted to coat and bake all the crackers at once because the end result will be more chewy than crunchy. The idea here is crunchy around the edges and chewy toward the middle of each cracker.
- Store at room temperature in an airtight container. These will probably keep a week or two, although they've never lasted that long in my house.
Nutritional facts per serving:
148 calories
4g fat
286mg sodium
28g carbs
1g fiber
2g protein
