Anzac Biscuits

“Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

—Colonel Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), whose troops opposed the ill-fated ANZAC landing at Gallipolli in 1915, in a memorial dedication speech in 1934

I don't generally “do” patriotism, in the ideological sense, and I don't usually get misty-eyed over Anzac Day, a day of remembrance and a public holiday that commemorates the soldiers of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps who fell at Gallipoli in 1915. Like many young Australians, particularly those who don't have (or never met) a family member who fought in the World Wars, Anzac Day makes me think first and foremost—and this is not to my credit—of barbecuing and menu planning rather than Aussie diggers and their seemingly remote, if nonetheless deeply appreciated, sacrifices. (Apparently, to a significant number of my compatriots Anzac Day is all about some AFL grudge match, but how this can possibly be more important than the barbecuing part, I fail to understand.)

I always think with affection of the Anzac Day backyard barbecue, an end-of-summer ritual which takes full advantage of the public holiday and the last balmy days before the cold sets in, to bring together friends, food, and copious amounts of beer and wine. Truth be told, there is usually very little sober remembrance involved in these events; they tend to be more about celebration—of sunshine, friendship, being alive—than commemoration. But this year in chilly Toronto, there was no real Anzac Day celebration for us; we had a big Easter Sunday dinner with friends, and that felt like excess enough for the weekend. Despite the fact that I’ve never really thought too much about Anzac Day before, it seemed odd to think it would pass me by this year without being marked at all. It felt a little bit too much like letting go of something, or forgetting something that used to be important to me.

I remembered when I was a teenager first learning to bake, and how one of the first things I made successfully (because they're pretty much impossible to mess up) was Anzac biscuits—chewy, rugged, golden rounds of goodness that the mothers and wives left at home used to send over to the diggers in the trenches of Europe during the First World War. There is something incredibly homely and even maternal about these biscuits. They certainly ain't fancy. They are a sweet, buttery, satisfying treat that is also economical to make, and a nutritional powerhouse—just what a mother would give a child who needed the comfort of sugar, but also bodily sustenance. My own Anzac biscuit recipe was one of the first I ever called my own; it was adapted, of course, from the basic list of ingredients (it's generally agreed that the biscuits must include oats, golden syrup, and desiccated coconut), but with a few additions that made it uniquely mine. I was proud of my Anzac biscuits. It was my first ever specialty, and possibly the first dish that gave me that overwhelming sense of achievement, that high you get when a dish comes off just as you imagined it, that is like crack cocaine to people who love to cook.

I stopped making them, though, for some reason, and this year I came to the shocking realization that I haven’t made Anzac biscuits since I was about fourteen. My prized recipe, that I knew off by heart, has disappeared from my memory. It probably wasn’t that special anyway, and I doubt the annals of culinary history will mourn its loss, but I wanted to see if I still had the touch—especially since, after that one early triumph and after all these years of practice, I’m still a pretty lousy baker. So I determined to try again. They came out beautifully, like sunshine on a cold, grey day, warming my cold Toronto kitchen and filling the house with the fragrance of home. The recipe I used follows.

My youthful innovations notwithstanding, the authenticity of the Anzac bickie recipe is ferociously defended. (And may God forgive you if you blaspheme the honourable name of Anzac by Americanising them to “cookies”. Just ask Allen Williams, a US food blogger who was subjected to the wrath of his readers and forced to amend his post when he tried that little joke on. Indeed, the enshriners of the Anzac biscuit into law—see below—make particular reference to the fact that an "Anzac cookie" is, by definition, a contradiction in terms.)

The fast food chain Subway also got a taste of the famous Anzac spirit in 2008, when their Australian outlets started peddling something claiming to be an Anzac biscuit. The term “ANZAC” is legally protected, as is, in fact, the definition of the biscuit itself, which “must remain basically true to the original recipe” (though I’d be interested to see if anyone can in fact point to an original, definitive, Ur-recipe). Subway’s faux-Anzacs differed so substantially from the real thing that the Department of Veteran’s Affairs decided to sic the lawyers, and actually ordered global corporate giant Subway to either make the damn biscuits properly, or cease selling them altogether. Subway’s American suppliers apparently couldn’t produce them cheaply enough for Subway using the original recipe—which is pretty revealing, given that this recipe, whose main ingredients are rolled oats, flour, and brown sugar, was developed by working-class women during the food shortages and inflated prices of World War One—and they were forthwith dropped from the menu. For myself, I can only regard the Veterans’ Affairs’ intervention in this matter as a triumphant victory for real food and the preservation of culinary heritage, and I applaud them wholeheartedly. (Is this about as close as Aussies get to a European/D.O.C.-style food quality protection system?) If Subway learned one thing from this debacle it was the strength of feeling that attends treasured culinary tradition, especially one so closely linked in the national consciousness with contemporary Australian identity and the suffering and sacrifice that forged it. As the World Wars recede from the popular imagination into history, and many of those who participated in even the Second World War begin to pass on, we may not be thinking so much about the men and women who fought and died, and the (mostly women) who tried to bring comfort through food to loved ones on the other side of the world. We may be collectively guilty of turning Anzac Day into an excuse for a bit of nationalistic lip-service before getting down to the real business of eating and drinking (okay, and football). But we know one thing. Don't be messing with our Anzac biscuits.

Anzac Biscuits

1 cup of plain flour

1 cup of rolled oats (old-fashioned, not instant)

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup desiccated (dried) coconut (unsweetened, medium-ground)

1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tbsp boiling water

120 grams butter

2 tbsp golden syrup*

Makes roughly 24 biscuits

Preheat oven to 180C (approximately 375F). Line two baking sheets with baking parchment. Combine the oats, flour, sugar, and coconut in a large bowl and mix well.

Combine the syrup and butter in a small saucepan and melt slowly together. Combine the bicarbonate and boiling water in a small bowl, and then stir into golden syrup mixture.

Now combine all the ingredients and mix well. The mixture should be moist but not gloopy, and hold together well. Add a few drops of water if too dry, or a touch more flour if too wet. (This is why Anzacs are so difficult to mess up—simply adjust until you get it right!) Dollop large teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto trays, well spaced apart. (Yes, just a teaspoon—this is no gigantic American cookie, but a modest, snack-sized biscuit.) You can flatten the dollops to make them thin, but I prefer my biscuits chewy rather than crunchy, so I make them somewhat thicker. This is a matter of preference. Whatever you do, don't make them too neat—they're supposed to be craggy and interesting-looking (as far as I'm concerned, anyway).

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container; the biscuits stay chewy for a few days, but are perfectly good for up to two weeks.

Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside.

* Apparently golden syrup can be difficult to find in North America, though I had no trouble locating it in the baking section of my local No Frills. If you’re not so lucky, you could try substituting light molasses, or go Canadian with maple syrup—this was going to be my Plan B if I couldn’t get golden. If you do get your hands on some, you must, must, MUST try making golden syrup dumplings—this is what good Australians are given to eat when they get to heaven. Here’s the recipe from one of Australia’s grand dames of cooking, Maggie Beer: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/cookandchef/txt/s1679273.htm