Have you ever looked at the ingredients on a box Vanilla Wafers? Yikes! Here it is:
Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Folic Acid), Sugar, Soybean Oil, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, Whey (from Milk), Eggs, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Salt, Leavening (Baking Soda and/or Calcium Phosphate), Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides, Soy Lecithin).
High fructose syrup and partially hydrogenated oils?! Can I just say “Yikes” again? Great, I can? Yikes!
Not only is are the ingredients frightening, but to be perfectly honest, I’ve never understood the allure of vanilla wafers. Other than getting mushy in a nice big bowl of homemade banana pudding… That I understand. But on their own? No thank you! They were always so incredibly dull. If I was going to eat a cookie, I was going to a real cookie. You know?
But then I tried my hand at making my own wafers, and do you know what happened? The heavens opened, a choir of angels began to sing, and I started to tear up they tasted so good! Or something relatively close to that…
If you’ve never made your own vanilla wafers before, then you have no idea what you are missing. They take your already delicious recipes that call for wafers from great to extraordinary. In fact, my husband often requests that I make banana pudding just so he can eat the wafers. Ha, ha!
And best of all, they are pretty simple too although they do require kneading and chilling.
Are you ready to get started? Let’s go!
In a large bowl, cream together butter, coconut sugar, salt, egg, and vanilla. Into a separate bowl, sift together flour and baking powder, and gradually add it to creamed mixture.
Once it is all combined, turn it out onto a floured surface (I just use a clean countertop) and knead thoroughly until mixed well. Place the kneaded dough back into the bowl, cover, and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and create a parchment lined baking sheet.
Again on a clean, floured surface, roll the dough into long logs. Slice thinly into cookies using a sharp knife, and place on cookie sheet. Keep in mind that cookies don’t expand, so the size you cut is the size you will get.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Kneel at your oven door (with the oven light on) and keep watch while they bake so that they do not become overdone. I always feel like I am on The Great British Baking Show when I make them. Cool and store in an airtight container.
Pro Tip: When making my homemade vanilla wafers, if you want to enjoy them as cookies or as a garnish for banana pudding, you can slice them off into rounds, but if you are going to use them as a crust, just flatten the dough out into a pan and bake. You’ll end up with one ginormous cookie, but why go to the trouble of slicing and baking them if you are just going to end up crumbling them up? If you end up going this route, bake them for the same 8 to 10 minutes.
And there you have it! The most amazing homemade vanilla wafers on the planet. Once you eat these, you’ll never buy another box again.
So go make some! Today is a great day to bake!
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One bite of these homemade vanilla wafers, and you will never, ever want to buy the store-bought kind again. Perfect for banana pudding, different crusts, and a children’s snack without all of the chemicals and preservatives. This is the way a vanilla wafer should be!
Ingredients
½ c. (1 stick) grass fed butter
1 c. coconut sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 pasture raised egg
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 c. white wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Instructions
In a large bowl, cream together butter, coconut sugar, salt, egg, and vanilla. Into a separate bowl, sift together flour and baking powder, and gradually add it to creamed mixture.
Once it is all combined, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead thoroughly until mixed well. Place the kneaded dough back into the bowl, cover, and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and create a parchment lined baking sheet.
Again on a clean, floured surface, roll the dough into long logs. Slice thinly into cookies using a sharp knife, and place on cookie sheet. Keep in mind that cookies don’t expand, so the size you cut is the size you will get.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Kneel at your oven door (with the oven light on) and keep watch while they bake so that they do not become overdone. I always feel like I am on The Great British Baking Show when I make them. Cool and store in an airtight container.
Notes
Adapted from The Lady & Sons Just Desserts.
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