Anzac Biscuits

These are simple, delicious, oaty, coconutty biscuits and everyone who has every tasted them loves them. With the oats they are awesome energy snacks for taking up mountains or on boats etc, but they are pretty good anytime of the day or night.

My family have made these as long as I can remember, but the recipe apparently comes from the First World War when they were baked by Australian and New Zealand women to take over to the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Apologies to the people who invented them, but I've eaten Anzacs in loads of places in Oz and NZ and I think that these are better.

Ingredients

• 1 cup porridge oats
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup dessicated coconut
• 1 cup sugar
• 4oz (110g) butter or margarine
• 1 tbsp golden syrup (or honey)
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda dissolved in approx 1 tbsp warm water

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 170C
• Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl
• Melt the butter and the syrup
• Add the melted butter and syrup and the bicarb dissolved in some water to the dry ingredients
• Get your hands in the bowl and mix well by rubbing the mixture between your fingers and thumb
• The mixture should just hold together when squeezed with your hands and it may be necessary to add more water to achieve this. You need to be able to form balls slightly smaller than a ping pong ball that aren't too sticky and just hold together when pressed down
• Lightly butter 2 baking trays
• Form the mixture into balls and place on the baking sheets with enough space around them so they can spread out. This should make 16 - 18 biscuits
• Using 2 fingers press down each ball to flatten slightly
• Bake for approx 15 mins, checking after 7 mins and if they aren't colouring evenly swap the trays around. They should be a golden brown colour when done.
• Cool them on a tray and they'll keep for a few days in a sealed container

Notes

• Despite being very simple Anzacs always seem to come out slightly differently every time you make them. Sometimes they spread out loads and are crunchy throughout, sometimes they are fatter and more of a flapjack consistency, but the Holy Grail of Anzac cookery is crunchy round the outside soft in the middle, hhmmmmm.
• I've experimented a little with the recipe adding things like ground almonds, raisins, cinnamon etc, but I have to admit that the plain ones are always the best