Delicious Chewy ANZAC Biscuits

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First off, I need to clarify that in Australia, a biscuit is what Americans would call a cookie. These biscuits have existed for over a century, but gained their widest acclaim during the World Wars, when wives and mothers would bake them to send over to their husbands and sons who made up the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC for short). The ingredients didn’t spoil easily and these delicious little morsels could also take the rigours of being shipped by the Navy to soldiers overseas. Fun fact time! As these biscuits are associated with and use the ANZAC name, they are legally only allowed to be sold as ‘biscuits’ and not ‘cookies’, as that’s the traditional Australian word!

There’s usually only slight variation between ANZAC biscuit recipes, and it pretty much breaks down to whether or not you like them chewy or hard, and with or without coconut. I, personally, don’t really care for coconut, nor was it in the earliest recipes, so I don’t put it in. The best ANZAC biscuits I’ve ever had were made by my great-grandmother, Nana Jones. When I complimented them to my mother, she said it was because Nana put more golden syrup in them.

I had a craving for ANZAC biscuits recently, but wanted them the way my Nana used to make them. I don’t have her recipe (I’ve mentioned here before that my family weirdly safeguards their recipes even from each other) so I took to Google to find a chewy ANZAC recipe. I found quite a few, but none that seemed just right, so I came up with this one myself, and I’m very happy I did! I do hope you try these, they’re delicious and nostalgic and a really nice treat with a big cup of tea! I know they’re not the nicest biscuit to look at, but they are certainly delicious to eat. I’ve made this recipe twice since it’s inception and both times it wasn’t long before they were all gone!

Delicious Chewy ANZAC Biscuits Ingredients:

• 2 Cups Plain Flour
• 3 Cups Rolled Oats
• 1½ Cups Raw Sugar*
• 250g Butter or Margarine
• 1/3 Cup Golden Syrup**
• 1/3 Cup Hot Water
• 2 Tsp Bi-Carb Soda

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160 °C (320 °F)
• Mix flour, rolled oats, and raw sugar in a large mixing bowl.
• Dissolve bi-card soda in the hot water.
• Melt butter and syrup in medium sized saucepan, then with the saucepan next to your mixing bowl of pre-mixed dry ingredients, stir in the bi-carb water solution.

• This may froth up quite a bit, so be ready to pour it into the mixing bowl quickly.

• Mix the wet and dry ingredients together fully.

• Place 2 Tbsp sized balls of mixture onto a baking tray lined with baking paper*** and press them down lightly. Give them some room as they will spread out!

• Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until golden.
• Cool for 10 minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

 

Voila! Ready to Serve! Delicious Chewy ANZAC Biscuits!

Notes:

* Raw sugar in Australia is the same as ‘granulated sugar’ in the U.S. You can use brown sugar if you’d like, or white/castor sugar, it’s a really easy-going recipe!

** Golden syrup is sometimes sold in the U.S. as ‘light treacle’, but I have also seen it sold as golden syrup online like on Amazon. It’s made from sugar cane, so you could substitute in light molasses as it has a similar flavour profile. You could even substitute in maple syrup, but you cannot substitute in corn syrup as it has the completely wrong flavour profile.

***Baking paper is the Australian term, but it’s also called ‘greaseproof paper’ or ‘parchment paper’ in the U.S.