Anzac Biscuits
We all know and love our Anzac Biscuits, there have been modern takes on these for years but I thought I’d wind the clock back 100 years and use, from what I could find, a 100 year old recipe to mark the day of ANZAC Remembrance for 2020, this recipe is from St Andrews Cook Book reviewed on Radio NZ last year - find it here
These had none of the baking soda flavour that Granny’s may have had (I do remember it being quite strong and off putting, sorry Granny!) they were ‘the best ever Mum.’ So give them a go, as the modern take with new replacement ingredients are yum, but don’t represent the biscuit of old - just saying!
Anzac Biscuits
Ingredients
4 cups flaked oatmeal
2 scant cups flour (237g)
1 cup sugar
227 grams melted butter
2 small tsp baking soda
2 tbs treacle or golden syrup
2 tbs boiling water
Method
Put dry ingredients into the basin, add melted butter with treacle and hot water. Mix all together, bake in small pieces, flattened out, for 15 minutes at 180c in a fan-forced oven.
A helpful note from a listener off RadioNZ:
“A tablespoon is not a 15 or even 20ml tablespoon. It was a large spoon kept in the drawer and usually used for serving vegetables. I have just measured what it would hold, as I now have them, and it is 30mls in that spoon. So I used those spoons for the golden syrup.
And imperial cups of the time are not the same as our 250ml metric cups. I noticed the recipe on RNZ said scant cups but I had taken the recipe as you said it on the radio so I had already put the cups in and it was too dry when I added the liquids.
An Imperial cup is 237mls now but for grandma it was probably any cup to hand. Something rings a bell about a cup of flour being 6ozs, but I would need to verify that.”