Teething Biscuits

My kid has been interested in feeding herself lately, but her hands can’t quite do the little cereal thing yet. She like soda crackers, but I’m not excited about her eating all that salt, especially since she’s not much into water. Figuring I’d try my hand at making some cracker-like things, I read about twenty recipes for various crackers or teething biscuits. Then, I chose a recipe to make (the recipe from Buffalo News here.) Then, I didn’t really make the recipe at all. I saw something on the recipe, and it would remind me of something I could add, and then I’d just dump something in the bowl. The result: a tasty, but somewhat softer than desirable cookie-like thing. The kid loved eating one. I had to slow her down because she was shoving it into her mouth faster than she could do the chewing and swallowing parts. It was a bit more crumbly than I’d hoped. I might give them one more toast in the oven to get them a little harder.

I’ll try to estimate what I actually did here, with a few suggestions for next time.

Ingredients:

some instant non-fat dry milk powder–a small pile in the bottom of the bowl, something like 1/2 cupsome sugar–about the same amount as the milk. I probably could have even left this out.
some vegetable oil–about the same…
some applesauce–whatever was left after I scraped out the jar and filled a bowl for the kid to eat while I mixed these. A couple tablespoons?
One overripe banana
some wheat germ–about the same as the milk powder
2 1/2 tsps baking powder–I measured this, because I had to use a spoon to get it out of the can anyway. I should have used less.
a little cinnamon–sprinkle it in until it looks like it might taste like cinnamon. Then add more, because mine didn’t taste like cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt–um, no, I didn’t measure it, but it was a small pile in my hand
undiluted, frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed–most of a can that was leftover after making some smoothies with the rest. Probably use less OJ next time, since the cookies taste pretty orangey.
a good bit of flour–white, whole wheat, whatever. I used some of both. Maybe 3 or 4 cups in all.

Directions:

Combine all the ingredients in the order listed. Or a different order, whatever. Just make sure the salt and baking powder don’t clump up, because that’d just be nasty. Add flour until it’s a pretty stiff dough. Taste it, and decide that it tastes a bit acidic, and add a couple teaspoons of baking soda. (Regret that move later. Decide that 2 tsp of baking soda in the first place would have been about right.) Refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours. Or don’t. My batter rose a bunch, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing–it was a funky texture when taken out of the fridge. And it only rose for about 45 minutes while I made the brownies.

Place greased cookie sheet on damp towel to keep from sliding. Place dough on cookie sheet and flatten, rolling out to within 1 inch of the edge. Cut into 2 by 3/4-inch bars; separating the cookies isn’t necessary. Bake 15 minutes in preheated 375-degree oven until light brown.

Remove from oven; re-cut on the same lines. Return to oven. Turn off heat and let set until oven is cool. Makes about 6 dozen cookies that can be frozen and thawed as needed. **Freezes Well**

I had trouble following these directions because of my nasty dough texture. It’s also hard to use a rolling pin on my cookie sheets, since they’re actually jelly roll pans with short sides. To solve the problem, I plopped the dough on a silicone mat and topped it with was paper. After giving it a good rolling, I plopped the mat onto the cookie sheet and peeled of the wax paper. I tried cutting them with a pizza cutter, but I think I’d just skip this cutting step next time. After baking, I re-cut, when the pizza cutter did just fine. My oven cools pretty quickly, and these would probably be better if the oven had been left on a low temperature for a while to crisp a little.

Also, I left out the egg from the original recipe since I didn’t want to use this crazy recipe to introduce eggs to my kid. Next time, I’d probably leave out the applesauce and banana and add the egg back.