Hi friends, it’s true, crackers without the rolling. Amy here sharing this week’s iteration of this miracle recipe I found online. It all started with an abundance of oats…

A friend gifted me many pounds of organic rolled oats. Searching for inspiration to use them, I found Camilla’s Easy No-Roll Oat Crackers ( vegan, oil free, GF). It is a brilliant recipe that I’ve been making often these last few weeks since I discovered it. Besides oats, they contain seeds or mix of seeds. Sunflower makes particularly good crackers but branching out, I remembered Carolyn’s Black Beauty Wafers using saguaro seed. The seeds are strained out when making a syrup so those are a brilliant way to use the seed.

In June, the birds get the first feast of saguaro fruit. If there is more ripening fruit than the birds eat, it falls the ground, often sun dried and intensely concentrated, where I can easily harvest it without poking the plant. No need for a pole!

The ground animals get to feast first before the humans, of course, so we waited. But ripe fruit spoils in the rain, and I would never complain about glorious rain! So this year wasn’t the best saguaro fruit harvest for humans. (below, note the mesquite leaflets for scale)

I had some oooold fruit stored in the pantry so I decided to use the whole fruit instead of just the seeds.

I soaked it in water to soften it.

And blended it enough to grind the seeds. Then I added the oats, salt, baking powder and oil.

The batter is poured onto a greased half sheet pan (or even a bit larger pan to make crackers just a bit thinner).

Instead of rolling the dough, it just needs to be smooth!

I prefer to add just a touch of salt to the batter so I can sprinkle a decent amount on top. I ground my best Mexican sea salt for this.

Then I sprinkled with saguaro seed.

After baking for ten minutes, the crackers can be scored before returning to the oven to finish.

After baking with careful supervision, this batch got darker from the sugar in the saguaro fruit than other batches. A hit of sweetness and delicious! Next time I’ll use a slightly larger yet pan so they are a little thinner. The thinner ones are crispier and more delicate. But think or thin, they are easy to enjoy with spreads, alongside a salad or on their own as a trail snack. Enjoy!

For the recipe, see Camilla’s post on her blog powerhungry.com

Instead of seeds, I added the equivalent weight of dry saguaro fruit. I added a quarter cup of olive oil and reduced the water by that amount. I used approximately 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt divided between the batter and sprinkled on top with the saguaro seeds. Experiment and have fun!