HONEY GRAHAM CRACKER SQUARES

Let’s get this right out in the open: Some people’s aggressively early holidaying hit me the wrong way this year. Instead of making me feel excited about my favorite season, it sent me into hiding, Well, not hiding exactly, but hunkering inside, holidaying with my own people—privately (ie. off the ‘gram and other social).

It’s not that I’m a scrooge or Bah! Humbug! Far from it. I live for Christmas. We got our tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving (a real beaut), it’s officially trimmed and All I Want for Christmas radio on Pandora (yes, still Pandora!) is playing around the clock. Also, there have been cookies: lots of cookies, and it’s only just beginning.

But, when other people’s posts of tinsel-dripping twelve-foot trees and perfectly gilded mantles have you feeling envy or self-defeat, instead of inspiration, it’s time to tun out. Is the point of holiday-ing to spread joy, or to show off how much we all have it together in life? I’m not sure anymore.

If I dig deeper—for the emotion below the emotion (a new life skill that is hard, but so great), it’s a feeling of being rushed that I don’t like. A harried we have only 28 days left to make this Magical AF or you’ve failed vibe doesn’t bring out the best in me.

Rushing the holidays is the anti-thesis, for me, of what I look forward to all year. It’s opposite the coziness of the Christmas we had growing up—with few parties, but lots of crusty royal icing drips here and there, from the ongoing gingerbread house projects that there was no rush to clean up. There were few beautifully braided heads with tidy red bows, but dozens of delicious cookies in tins and on paper plates, packed for giving and grazing. Few Instagrammable vignettes (if it had existed then…) but instead four happy, over-sugared children running in circles around the tree, playing make believe with the felt, wire-elbowed stuffed elves my mom made with her friends at church. Christmas was less of a business then, and more of a ritual. Sacred, slow. We didn’t have matching pajamas, nor did we even know they existed.

We didn’t need them. Not even a little.

To be fair: I have been guilty of all of the trappings of modern holidaying. I’ve commissioned lace-trimmed, perfectly angelic white nightgowns for my daughter from Etsy many years running, rushed out to find 7 pairs of matching long johns, fluffy socks and stocking caps for my kids and their closest friends or cousins. I’ve proudly posted my most beautiful cakes and holiday spreads the moment my guests went home. I’ve urgently, publicly Christmas’d plenty in my day. I did it with joy and love, I shared with good will and a feeling of utter delight—hoping and believing that’s the feeling that came with it for the viewer on the other side, too. I know now that not everyone would have received it that way.

It could be the pandemic, or just nostalgia for the simpler times of say, 1985, when the most magical feeling on earth to me was that of the simple Christmas my own mother created at home. Then, and only then, dad would be home for stretches on end. When the holiday pies and cookies would run thin, he’d reached for a hefty sleeve of graham crackers and pour us each a deep glass of whole milk. We’d sit around dunking and dipping, eating them until the last bits slipped into puddles in our cups. It was perfect.

Nostalgia and the genuine, love-drenched kind of people of my childhood are two of the things that have drawn me so strongly to Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking (as Jennifer Gardner put it: “Cheryl’s recipes taste like home.”), which has been sitting on my kitchen counter for three weeks now. There are just too many recipes in it I want to bake from it that at first I didn’t know where to start, a rarer and rarer feat for a new book these days. But then my eyes flipped to the Honey Graham Cracker Squares—unfussy, un-glittered, and yet totally complete—the very feeling of home for me.

I knew they were it.

These are the very graham’s Cheryl’s great-grandmother Queen served in her own general store in Clopton, Alabama, a visual that completely thrills me, and I bet you can get them in Cheryl’s bakery, too (I wish I could meet them, both—I like to believe I would have been their best customers, given the chance).

I’m leaving the recipe for them here for you, in gratitude to Cheryl and Queen, plus the link to the book which is indeed a treasure. They’re a token of honesty in a harried holiday world. A reminder that simplicity is never out of fashion and flavor actually does come from the heart.

I hope you’ll bake them, and you know what else? I hope you’ll write to me. I don’t leave my comment board open—I believe direct and private praise as well as direct and private critique/criticism/correction are more useful and meaningful for all parties—but you can always write to me via my CONTACT button. I want to hear about your own childhood holiday. And how you see it all now. Has it changed? And how/why? Have you already started ginger-breading? Have you decided to take it slower this year? Or conversely, have you decided that after two winters hunkering you’re going all out and feeling super motivated and proud about it? It’s all welcome here, and I deeply long for your stories. XO

RECIPE, BELOW

CHERYL DAY’S HONEY GRAHAM CRACKERS

Excerpted from Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking by Cheryl Day (Artisan Books).

MAKES 24 SQUARES

FOR THE GRAHAM CRACKERS

3 CUPS (360 G) GRAHAM FLOUR

1 CUP (220 G) PACKED DARK BROWN SUGAR

1 TEASPOON (6 G) BAKING SODA

1 TEASPOON FINE SEA SALT

½ TEASPOON GROUND CINNAMON

¼ CUP (59 ML) WHOLE MILK

¼ CUP (59 ML) HONEY

2 TEASPOONS PURE VANILLA EXTRACT

8 TABLESPOONS (1 STICK/113 G) COLD UNSALTED BUTTER,  CUT INTO ½-INCH (1.5 CM) CUBES

FOR THE CINNAMON SUGAR

¼ CUP (50 G) GRANULATED SUGAR

1 TABLESPOON GROUND CINNAMON

TO MAKE THE GRAHAM CRACKERS: IN A LARGE BOWL, WHISK THE GRAHAM FLOUR, BROWN SUGAR, BAKING SODA, SALT, AND CINNAMON TOGETHER UNTIL COMPLETELY BLENDED.

IN A LARGE MEASURING CUP OR SMALL BOWL, COMBINE THE MILK, HONEY, AND VANILLA AND STIR UNTIL BLENDED.

ADD THE BUTTER TO THE FLOUR MIXTURE AND TOSS TO GENTLY COAT IT. THEN, USING YOUR FINGERTIPS, PINCH AND SMEAR THE BUTTER INTO THE FLOUR. YOU SHOULD HAVE VARIOUS-SIZED PIECES OF BUTTER RANGING FROM SANDY PATCHES TO PEA-SIZED CHUNKS, WITH SOME LARGER BITS AS WELL. GRADUALLY ADD THE MILK MIXTURE, STIRRING UNTIL THE DOUGH COMES TOGETHER.

TURN THE DOUGH OUT AND DIVIDE IT IN HALF. 

SHAPE EACH PIECE INTO A DISK, WRAP THE DISKS IN PLASTIC WRAP, AND REFRIGERATE FOR AT LEAST 1 HOUR, AND UP TO OVERNIGHT, TO REST. (THE DOUGH CAN BE REFRIGERATED FOR UP TO 5 DAYS OR FROZEN, WELL WRAPPED, FOR UP TO 1 MONTH. IF FROZEN, DEFROST IN THE REFRIGERATOR OVERNIGHT.)

POSITION THE RACKS IN THE MIDDLE AND LOWER THIRD OF THE OVEN AND PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 375°F (190°C). LINE TWO BAKING SHEETS WITH PARCHMENT.

TO MAKE THE CINNAMON SUGAR: COMBINE THE SUGAR AND CINNAMON IN A SMALL CUP.

REMOVE THE DOUGH FROM THE REFRIGERATOR. IF IT HAS BEEN REFRIGERATED OVERNIGHT, LET STAND FOR 10 TO 15 MINUTES BEFORE YOU ROLL IT OUT.

ON A FLOURED SURFACE, ONE AT A TIME, ROLL OUT EACH PIECE OF DOUGH TO A ⅛-INCH (3 MM) THICKNESS. CUT INTO 24 SQUARES. PRICK THE SQUARES WITH A FORK AND PLACE THEM ON THE PREPARED BAKING SHEETS, SPACING THEM 1 INCH (3 CM) APART TO ALLOW FOR SPREADING. SPRINKLE WITH THE CINNAMON SUGAR.

BAKE FOR 14 TO 16 MINUTES, ROTATING THE PANS HALFWAY THROUGH AND SWITCHING THEIR POSITIONS, UNTIL THE SQUARES ARE DARK GOLDEN. LET COOL COMPLETELY ON THE PANS ON WIRE RACKS.

The squares can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Copyright © 2021. Photographs by Angie Mosier