Les Petits Chefs baking club made a favourite bake last week – and an appropriate one, given that ANZAC Day was last Friday.
Wait, what… What is ANZAC DAY ?
This day commemorates the anniversary of the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landing on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915. Every year, ANZAC Day is day of remembrance where Australians and New Zealanders honour the memory of those who have served and died in all military operations.
Why do Australians eat biscuits (cookies) on ANZAC Day?
During World War I, mothers, wives and girlfriends would send food care packages to their men serving in the war, though this article I came across recently suggests:
While some families or communities may have made and sent what we now call Anzac Biscuits to the front in the First World War, it did not have the national cultural import that subsequent stories have given it (although it was sent to Australians serving in subsequent wars).
If we believe the stories, though the ships carrying the care packages would take months to arrive, so any food had to be edible after that long without refrigeration. The ANZAC biscuit only contains a handful of ingredients, none of which spoil quickly (so, no eggs) – they were the perfect food to pack and send. During the war, eggs were scarce anyway, so the binding agent is the golden syrup (although I’ve found sweet brown rice syrup works well if you cannot find golden syrup). To make sure the biscuits stayed crisp on the long voyage, they were packed in tins such as airtight tea tins. These were dubbed ANZAC biscuits after the landing at Gallipoli and are one of the few products able to be legally marketed in Australia using the word ANZAC which is protected by Federal Legislation.
Not only are these biscuits/cookies super easy to make, it’s the perfect mini history lesson at the same time!
This time, I made a few changes to the recipe to ensure success!
Ok, so one of the main ingredients in ANZAC biscuits is Golden Syrup (<<< affiliate link) that is sometimes tricky to get hold of here (especially around ANZAC Day!). This was true this year and I used honey which worked just fine – not quite the same taste but the cookies stuck together.
You might be forgiven for thinking that we made some kind of oatcake from the photos – the original recipe doesn’t call for them to be make in muffin tins with paper liners. But, time being of the essence in club, I wanted to make sure these stuck together (somethings they can be a bit finicky) AND that they were able to be transported home safely – because I knew they wouldn’t be set enough – the cupcake liners would hold them together! This was a brilliant hack that I will use again at school!
It really is the easiest recipe – measure (in our case, weigh – so it’s truly just a couple of bowls to wash!) the dry ingredients. Flour, oats, coconut, sugar…
Give it a good mix:
Meanwhile, melt the butter and golden syrup (or honey):
Then mix in some boiling water and baking soda…
Add that to the dry ingredients and give it a good stir…
We used cookie scoops to portion the mixture as I find it easier to ensure even portions when there are a lot of people working together…
We also used our fingers to press the mixture together once it was in the paper liners…
This worked really well!
And after a little bit of cooling time, they were solid enough to be packed in lunchboxes…
A pretty successful session all round – some ingredient and equipment hacks discovered, a history lesson learned AND a delicious result!
Get my traditional ANZAC Biscuit recipes!
Get my recipe for ANZAC Biscuits here.
Get my recipe for Gluten-Free, Vegan ANZAC Biscuits here.
Get my recipe for easy ANZAC Biscuit Slice here.
_________
Buy my books! In the French kitchen with kids and French Food for Everyone: le goûter (after school snacks), le dîner (dinner) and le petit déjeuner (breakfast) are out now!
Click here for details and how to order!
They are really good and so easy to make. And, they keep. But, I do think that golden syrup is the ‘go’ – honey, well OK if no choice. Even Golden Syrup here (down under) is not like it used to be … once, it came in a tin and it was so ‘thick’ you could stand a spoon up in it. Today, it comes in plastic and pours rather too easily. But the taste remains.
Actually, you can still buy golden syrup in those tins here and it really is thick enough to stand the spoon up in! But that’s the only way you can buy it and it’s really hard to come by at this time of year! I was pleased that the honey worked!
^^^^ I’m with Geoff here.
But okay, I’ll suffer my portion of honey ANZAC biscuits. 😉