Kids Cooking Thursday: Anzacs

Another fortnight, another Cook's Club Challenge. Three recipes, as usual - one you should see tomorrow, another next week, but today, handily enough in time for Kids Cooking Thursday, we made Anzac biscuits, more commonly known just as Anzacs. In fact, we are so fond of these biscuits in Australia that we have a whole day off for them, called Anzac Day. (Just kidding - it's really about this though to my mind (and yes, I am expecting to get flamed for this) a holiday commemorating thousands of people dying, because England told us to go invade another country that wasn't really doing anything to us makes about as much sense to me as a holiday for the making and consuming of biscuits.) That's about a month away - the day after Master Three's birthday in fact. I have a feeling that in about 15+ years, he'll be referring to it as Hangover Holiday - we should all be so lucky to get a public holiday after our birthday.

ANZAC Biscuits
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
¾ cup coconut
125grms butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
½ teaspoon bicarb
1 tablespoon boiling water

Combine oats, shifted flour, sugar and coconut.
Combine butter and syrup, stir over a gentle heat until melted.
Mix bicarb with water and add to butter mixture. Stir into dry ingredients.
Place tablespoons of mixture on lightly greased trays allowing room for spreading. Cook in a slow (140-150) oven for about 20minutes.
Loosen while warm and allow to cool on the trays.

This was a lovely simple recipe to do with the kids. I melted the butter before they came in to help, and everything else they could do. Miss Two particularly loves mixing with a wooden spoon, and tipping in measuring cups full of ingredients.

Crumbly mix

But I can't help thinking we did something wrong. Our mix was crumbly, so much so that I added another tablespoon of golden syrup. I had to ball these up with my hands to get the mix to stick together, and then very carefully flatten them with my hands - not a fork like my mother does.

Going in to the oven

Ours came out of the oven very pale, and not spread at all, but they were squishy in the centre, just like I remember Mum's to be, and hardened up after cooling slightly to be a nice chewy biscuit. But they don't taste quite as strong as Mum's, leading me to think that Mum used considerably more golden syrup in hers. I think perhaps I'll get her recipe, and make a comparison batch. After all, you can never have too many biscuits can you?

Out of the oven

Out of the oven close up

***EDIT*** Turns out my mum uses the same recipe, except she only uses 3/4 cup sugar, not a whole cup. So now I have no idea what went wrong.