Anzac Cookies

I made these Anzac cookies last week when I had a few friends coming around for dinner. I love cooking for my loved ones, but it's never anything fancy! I make Mum-food - the kind of food you can imagine a kind, slightly nutty middle-aged mother making. Instead it's a mostly kind, very nutty young nerd cooking these meals, but at least I'll be really great at baking by the time I am a middle-aged Mum. Right?

This recipe was passed on to me by one of my aunts - a very good aunt, in fact - who found it in the 1943 Willow Cookbook. Yep, 1943. Turns out in those days, the ingredients for baking must have been a lot less varied and interesting. I base this on the slightly disturbing lack of specificity in the recipe: it just says "flour" and "sugar", not which kinds! It took a little bit of trial and error but eventually I figured out how to make the recipe work.

Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup dessicated coconut
90g butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarb soda / baking soda
2 tablespoons boiling water

Sift flour and sugar into large bowl, mix in oats and coconut. Melt butter and add to boiling water. Mix golden syrup and bicarb soda into the butter mix.

Combine wet and dry ingredients, mix well.

Use about one teaspoon of mix for each cookie, drop onto baking paper on tray and bake for about ten minutes or until golden brown.

These are definitely the chewy kind of Anzac cookies. They have a sweet, almost nutty flavour and the oats and coconut give them a more interesting texture than most cookies.

The mix makes about fifty cookies so it's great when you have a whole heap of people coming over, or if you're bringing them to a party. It's too many to just have in the house (trust me, you won't be able to stop yourself from eating them all) but they do freeze well.