These easy, healthy Homemade Baby Crackers make a nutritious baby-led weaning snack or baby teething cracker to help soothe teething baby pain. Plus, these baby crackers are gluten-free, sugar-free, and egg-free, suitable for kids with food allergies.
Learn how to make an egg-free baby cracker recipe to offer a nutritious snack or baby teething biscuits. These are the easiest to make, have no added sugar, and are so much more nutritious than store-bought baby biscuits.
What Are Baby Crackers?
Baby crackers are small nutritious homemade teething biscuits for babies from 6 months. They are naturally:
- Sugar-free sweetened with a natural sweetener like fruit puree, maple syrup, or veggie puree.
- Gluten-free
- Egg-free
- Dairy-free
A baby cracker is also a great finger food for teething babies because they are hard to chew and perfect for relieving teething pain. When sucked on, they melt in your baby’s mouth and provide nourishing protein, fiber, and vitamins.
There are also plenty of store-bought baby cracker options made from baby cereals or rice flour if you don’t feel like making your own. But this baby cracker recipe is so easy and healthy that you should definitely give it a go.
Ingredients and Substitutions
You need only a few ingredients that you probably have in the pantry.
- Oat Flour – this is basically rolled oats pulsed into flour. Follow my tutorial on how to make oat flour to make yours in less than 1 minute.
- Rice Flour – a great bland gluten-free flour for babies. You can swap for tapioca or arrowroot flour with a different ratio. See the recipe card below.
- Baking Powder – feel free to skip for kids under 1 year old.
- Melted Coconut Pil or vegetable oil, or melted butter.
- Cinnamon – optional and only for flavor. Note that cinnamon is not safe before 6 months of age. Therefore, as a precaution, I recommend not offering cinnamon before 12 months old.
- Unsweetened Applesauce or Mashed Bananas – I recommend apple sauce for a crunchier texture. Bananas make the baby teething biscuits softer.
- Vanilla Extract – for flavor.
How To Make Homemade Teething Biscuits
It’s very easy to make your own baby-led weaning crackers at home.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients: oat flour, rice flour, baking powder, and cinnamon. As mentioned before, cinnamon is not recommended before 6 months of age, so don’t give it to small babies.
- In another bowl, combine apple sauce, melted coconut oil, and vanilla extract. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until a dough forms.
- Another option is to bring all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until the dough comes together. If the dough is too crumbly or dry, add a little more water, one tablespoon at a time, until you form a ball of dough that is easy to roll.
- Roll the dough between pieces of parchment paper to prevent the dough from sticking to the roller pin.
- Then, cut out baby rusk shapes – small rectangles are handy for little hands, but you can also use fun cookie-cutter shapes.
- Finally, I recommend making baby crackers that are big enough to be held by small kids. If too small, kids can choke on them.
- Bake in preheated oven at 350°F (180°C) for 15 to 20 minutes on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper until the baby biscuits are golden brown.
- Cool on a cooling rack for an hour before offering it to babies.
Teething Biscuit Taste And Texture
These homemade teething biscuits are bland in flavor. They have a cereal cinnamon flavor with a nice crunch.
They are difficult to bite, so ensure they are hard enough to soothe babies’ teeth but melt easily in their mouths to be enjoyed and nutritious.
Storage
You can store these baby biscuits for up to one week in a sealed cookie jar at room temperature.
Baby crackers freeze very well in zip-lock bags. Thaw them for 30 minutes before offering them to babies.
Allergy Swaps
You can make plenty of easy swaps to this recipe to make it suitable for your baby’s allergies or to match the ingredients in your pantry.
For example, you can replace:
- Oat flour for all-purpose wheat flour or all-purpose gluten-free flour.
- Rice flour for arrowroot flour or tapioca flour – jump to the recipe card for conversion.
- Apple sauce by any fruit puree or veggie puree like sweet potato puree, mashed bananas.
Of course, any swap would impact the taste and texture of your kids crackers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Baby crackers are hard and can be a choking hazard if offered before your baby shows signs that they’re ready for solid food.
Usually, babies eat crackers from 6 months onwards.
If you offer these baby crackers as a baby teething biscuit, your baby must be at least 6 months old and ready for solid food.
You can offer baby teething biscuits to help your baby bite something hard to relieve teething pain.
These biscuits are also nourishing and won’t bring added sugar to your baby.
Graham crackers contain honey and cinnamon. Both are not safe for babies under 12 months.
Consequently, it’s better to make your own crackers for your baby and avoid graham crackers before 1 year old.
More Baby Recipes
I have plenty of baby recipes for you to try and make at home for your little ones. Below are my favorite baby recipes for you to try:
Did You Like This Recipe?
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Baby Teething Crackers
Ingredients
- 1 cup Oat Flour
- ⅓ cup + 2 tablespoons Rice Flour - 2/3 cup tapioca flour or corn flour
- ½ teaspoon Baking Powder - – optional, skip if desired
- ½ cup Unsweetened Applesauce
- 2 tablespoons Coconut Oil - melted
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence
Optional – from 12 months
- ½ teaspoon Cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set it aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk all the dry ingredients: oat flour, rice flour, baking powder, and cinnamon (if your baby is over 12 months old).
- Make a well in the center of the flours and add melted coconut oil, unsweetened applesauce, and vanilla essence.
- Stir with a spatula at first, then knead by hand until the dough comes together. This baby cracker dough is tough, and that's normal. You want to make hard crackers to soothe the teething pain. If the dough is too dry, add 1-2 tablespoons of water to bring the dough into a ball.
- Roll the dough between two pieces of parchment paper. Cut it into small long rectangles – see my pictures above for tips.
- Bake for 10-15 minutes. The longer you bake the crackers, the harder they are.
- Cool on a cooling rack and store in a cookie box for up to 2 weeks in the pantry.
Awesome recipe, my toddler loves it! Keeps him occupied and happy for a long time! I subbed the oat flour for buckwheat and coconut flour, and subbed the rice flour for half tapioca half arrowroot and they turned out great. Just needed to bake longer so that they got as hard as I wanted them.
These came out amazing my baby loved them! I can tell she felt some relief from her gums ! Thank you!!
Can I substitute coconut oil for vegetable oil?
If yes, would it be the same amount?
Yes you can, use the same amount indeed!
I’ve been making these for over a year, my daughter’s now 2.4 and just loves them, teething or not.
I am not getting the crunch I want. It takes for ever for them to brown and then they only brown at outer ends. What could be wrong? Didn’t change anything this time although I did double the recipe.
You can bake them longer, flip on the other side also make sure if they touch each other or the center won’t bake as well.
I’m confused- in one of your posts (I believe it was a baby pancake recipe) you stated that baking powder and baking soda are unsafe for babies under 1, and yet these are ingredients you list for this baby recipe? So this recipe is unsafe for my 9 month old? Do you have a category of recipes safe for the under 1 year olds? Thank you
The issue with baking soda or baking powder under 1 year old is the added sodium. It’s not recommended to use a large ratio of it for under 1, however, 1/2 teaspoon over 20 crackers represent a very tiny amount per serve in this recipe. It’s different for pancakes where the serving is smaller and usually you add 1-2 teaspoon so I prefer to skip it in baby pancakes. It’s up to you to add or remove in the crackers. The recipe will work without it. Also note that if you look at most store bought baked goods for kids under one, this raising agents is added. So it’s pretty much up to parents to make the choice.
These were pretty good. And my 1yo loves them! However, it was difficult to make sure my little one didn’t gnaw off a huge piece=choking hazard. Ugh….Any way to make them a bit better in this regard? I did substitute whole wheat flour for the oat flour. Maybe that was the issue? Thank you!
I would stick to the oat flour next time, or cook less longer to make them less dry!
Hi! So excited to make these! Can I use coconut flour instead of rice flour? If yes, is it 1:1 ratio? Thanks!
Do you think I can use rice cereal instead of rice flour for these?
I came back to say I tried the rice cereal. It did not work. My babies ate them anyway but they were soft and cookie like with no crunch.
Thanks for the feedback, I was pretty sure it won’t work as baby rice cereal are not made at 100% from rice flour and won’t crisp the crackers
I don’t think it will work but you can experiment !
No you can’t use coconut flour as a swap to rice flour for two reason. First, coconut flour is a high fiber flour that required way more liquid, and often eggs, to bind flour together. Then, coconut flour is way too high in fiber for babies, it can be difficult to swallow or too fulfilling.
Hi, can i skip baking powder? and is it safe for 10 months old baby to have baking powder?
Thank you
Yes you can skip it
I’m using arrowroot flour is it the same amount as the tapioca or corn flour (2/3 cups)?
Above it said to look at recipe card for arrowroot. This may be obvious I just want to make sure!
For this recipe, tapioca flour, arrowroot flour and corn flour can be used in same amount. In the recipe card I provide amount for rice flour or all of the previous. Enjoy!