ANZAC Biscuits 2012

A published article Sunday 1st April featuring myself as “Sweets with Alex Petersen, Pastry Chef” in the April/May issue of “Xcite” C.ex Group Magazine presenting my “ANZAC Biscuits” is displayed below with story and recipe.

ANZAC Biscuits

A traditional sweet eggless biscuit made using rolled oats, flour, desiccated coconut, sugar, butter, golden syrup, baking soda and boiling water. Anzac biscuits have been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps since World War 1. It was identified as the army biscuit, an ANZAC wafer or ANZAC tile with an essentially long shelf-life and was eaten as a substitute for bread. The biscuits were very hard and several soldiers favoured grinding them up and eating as porridge. This is the recipe I have used efficiently for 25 years with excellent response.

Ingredients

6 tablespoons butter (90g)

1 tablespoon golden syrup (22g)

1 cup caster sugar (110g)

1 cup plain flour (110g)

¼ cup desiccated coconut (22g)

½ cup rolled oats (55g)

3 tablespoons flaked almonds or granulated peanuts (45g)

1½ tablespoons of hot water (22g)

¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (1.5g)

Method

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Place butter and golden syrup in a pot over medium heat and blend with a spoon until melted. Place sugar, flour, coconut, rolled oats and almond flakes in a bowl and mix evenly. Add melted butter mixture to dry ingredients and combine. Mix soda in the hot water and add to the mixture. Mix to clear dough. Form round balls 25 grams for large biscuits and 7 grams for smaller biscuits. Place on greased trays and flatten with your hand. Bake 25 grams dough for 10 minutes for crispy biscuits or 7 minutes for soft centred biscuits. Bake 7 grams dough for 7 minutes for crispy biscuits or 5 minutes for soft centred biscuits.

Anzac Biscuit Sandwich

Bake 25 grams dough for 7 minutes and allow cooling before sandwiching two biscuits with vanilla Buttercream. Rest for 20 minutes in the fridge before dipping in chocolate and allow setting in the fridge before eating.

Note: I used dark 70 % dark chocolate but white or milk chocolate is good too. Treacle or molasses can be used as substitute for golden syrup if not available try using honey.