Anzac Biscuits (a 100-year-old recipe)

Anzac Biscuits - or Anzac Crispies, as they were known as in the 1922 edition of the St Andrew's Cookery Book (right). Photo: 123RF, Joanna Cobley

This recipe for 'Anzac Crispies' is from 1919 and included in the 1922 edition of the St Andrew's Cookery Book.

INGREDIENTS

Four cups flaked oatmeal

2 scant cups flour

1 cup sugar

227 grams melted butter

2 small teaspoonfuls baking soda

2 tablespoonfuls treacle or golden syrup

2 tablespoonfuls boiling water

METHOD:

Put dry ingredients into 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 listener notes:

I have just made the biscuits this afternoon, and as I was mixing it I remembered two things which could influence the recipe:

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.

I added another 1/4 of the wet ingredients and even then a little more melted butter.

I made about 46 biscuits. The builder took home half of them, as they smelled so good!