Some call them cookies: Anzac Biscuits

The school where I teach has a program called JanTerm – a 8-9 day period after Christmas break where students take four 80 minute classes per day that are outside of the regular curriculum. This year I decided to teach a baking class called Cookies around the World. We are baking cookies/desserts from 8 different countries and learning about how the cookie came to be so popular in its respective culture. I have been testing out recipes, my husband being the taste tester, to make sure they work before I attempt to make them with 24 junior high and high school students.

Today I made Anzac Biscuits from Australia, chewy butterscotch-flavored oatmeal and coconut cookies. We could not believe how good they were. They would be delicious with a cup of tea or coffee… or just a glass of milk which was what I had. I think their amazing flavor comes from butter (of course), but also golden syrup, an ingredient I had to buy online. It is a sticky, golden-colored, sweet, almost butterscotchy syrup that is a form of inverted sugar syrup (a syrup made by splitting sucrose into fructose and glucose). Many recipes I found said you could substitute corn syrup for golden syrup, which I’m sure would result in the same texture, but I don’t think the flavor would be nearly as good. I wish it were sold in stores around here so I could make these cookies more often. I guess buying it on amazon.com isn’t the worst case scenario.

The ingredients are very simple: flour, oats, sugar, butter, coconut, golden syrup, and baking soda.

The anzac biscuits were first created during World War I when mothers and wives of soldiers were concerned about the nutritional value of the food being supplied to the soldiers. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The food was transported on very slow-moving ships which took up to two months to reach their destinations, requiring the food to be edible after a long period of time. The women decided to make a biscuit with oats as the basis. The other ingredients they used were able to last for long periods of time as well. There are no eggs in these cookies as many of the poultry farmers had joined the service and eggs were hard to come by. The golden syrup was used as a binding agent instead (good choice!). They packaged the biscuits in airtight metal tins to keep them as fresh as possible. During World War II with refrigeration now available, anzac biscuits weren’t made nearly as often. Today they are still enjoyed regularly in Australia and are also often used by veterans’ organizations to raise funds for the care and welfare of aged war veterans.

 

Anzac Biscuits                                                                        

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup sugar
½ cup (1 stick) butter
2 Tbl golden syrup or corn syrup
2 Tbl water
1 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Add the oats, flour, coconut and sugar to a large bowl and mix together.

2. Add the butter, golden syrup and water to small saucepan. Set over a low flame and heat until the butter is completely melted, whisking all the ingredients together. Remove from heat and stir in the baking soda.

3. Pour the butter mixture into the dry ingredients and use a spatula or fork to mix the ingredients together.

4. Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter onto a greased baking pan, leaving room for them spread out a bit. Bake for anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes. The shorter time will yield chewy biscuits. Baked for the longer time, the biscuits become crispier.