I have both graham cracker crumbs and brown sugar and I cannot decide whether to use one or the other or neither. I am decorating a cake today for tomorrow and the cake needs to last a long time. Can you tell me any experience you've had with using either graham cracker crumbs or brown sugar as sand - both in terms of taste and texture?
I've used graham cracker crumbs, and I've also used nilla wafer crumbs. In the same type of post a few weeks ago, Doug had mentioned he uses a combination of graham cracker crumbs, nilla wafer crumbs, and brown sugar... he said he does that so there are variations in the sand color and it makes it look more realistic. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but it sounds like a great idea. HTH!!
I actually like to use both. Put the graham crackers into a food processor (other hard cookies work well also) and then add a small amount of brown sugar for a bit of sparkle. What ever you don't use can be stored in plastic container for later use.
It's great stuff.
Michele
I used Vanilla Wafers in my beach cake. Beware though, it is very hard to write on sand. The icing doesn't want to stick.
darkchocolate
I like to use a combo of the 3 things, Nilla Wafers, graham crackers and light brown sugar, to me when I go to the beach and the water washes up, there are like various shades of sand, so with the 3 that is awesome, I would play with them and figure out what look you like the best. I like the light brown sugar, now I have seen people use the dark with Nilla wafers when they have displayed water by whatever scene they are doing on the cake, to give it that wet sand look, but if you are just using sand, I would play with it, just do a little to see what you like. Good luck!!!
Look for granulated brown sugar. It looks just like sand.
SaraOk
I used brown sugar just a little bit or I put something on the bottom of the cake to protected from getting into the cake.
HOPE THAT HELPS 
MICHELLE
I use Graham Crackers and it works out nice!!!!
stacy
I did a cake with 'sand' on it the other week (its in my photos) I used nilla wafers, graham crackers, and sugar in the raw. i did put it in my food processor after a smashed the cookies to make it more fine. I now have a huge ziplock filled with it!! oh well 
I'm a big fan of cinnamon sugar. Because sand is crystalline in structure, using a crystalline "fake" like sugar lends realism, and the cinnamon adds the dimension of the color. A little brown sugar helps add more color dimension. I like that the cinnamon sugar is the consistency of dry sand.
I personally like a mixture of graham crackers and sugar because no one wants a mouth full of super fine graham cracker dust or a mouth full of sugar!
For this cake I used graham cracker crumbs and worked great. The kids loved it.
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_837143.html
Wow! Thanks so much for all the responses! 
After reading the comments, I'm going to go with a combination of graham crackers and brown sugar (too lazy to go buy Nilla wafers). I don't have a food processor but I bought the graham cracker crumbs already in crumb-form so I'm hoping I can just mix the brown sugar in with those by hand. I will let you know how it turns out. Thanks again!
I used gluten-free animal crackers just yesterday (the birthday girl has celiacs) and mixed in some white sparkling sugar and some orange & yellow sugars for different textures & sparkle
Good idea. Thanks everyone for your help! I ended up using white sugar, brown sugar, and graham crumbs. I am fairly happy with how the cake turned out although in the pic it looks like the bears blend into the background. I think it looks better in real life though Thanks again! I will be back with more questions.
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_906723.html
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