I have the Edmonds Classics cookbook from the library, and it's mostly full of recipes for biscuits (i.e. cookies if you're in North America), cakes and slices. The temptation for a sweet-toothed domestic goddess-in-training to try some of the biscuit recipes, was too great to resist.
First up was the recipe for ANZAC biscuits. They're full of coconut and rolled oats, so it's easy to pretend that you're actually doing your body a favour by eating half a dozen in one sitting - never mind all the butter that went into them. I did have a slight problem in that, even though I set the oven to exactly the required temperature, I had to remove the biscuits after five minutes to avoid ending up with a mess of sweet charcoal.
This recipe gets 9/10 for being so easy to make and 10/10 for yumminess.
Next up, the recipe for gingernuts. To make these, I had to cream a large hunk of butter with brown sugar and golden syrup.
I have vague memories of "creaming" from school cooking classes when I was about twelve, but obviously I had completely forgotten how much hard work this is.
Attempting to transform refrigerated butter (and sugar and syrup) into a light and fluffy mixture, is foolhardy without a cake mixer.
Attempting it with dodgy wrists is simply insane.
The resulting biscuit wasn't as pleasing as the ANZACs; I'm not sure if I worked the batter into sufficient fluffiness, but I am sure that I won't be making these again - not without a cake mixer anyway.
The recipe for gingernuts gets 2/10 for making my arm nearly drop off, and 5/10 for not tasting ginger-y enough.
I've typed in the recipe for ANZAC biscuits below:
ANZAC Biscuits
1/2 C standard grade flour
1/2 C sugar
3/4 C coconut
3/4 C rolled oats
100g butter
1 Tab golden syrup
1/2 teasp baking soda
2 Tab boiling water
Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Mix the flour, sugar, coconut and rolled oats. Melt butter and golden syrup. Dissolve baking soda in the boiling water and add to butter mixture. Stir butter mixture in the dry ingredients. Place level tablespoons of mixture 4-5 cm apart on cold oven trays. Flatten with a floured fork. Bake about 15 minutes or until golden (for me it took only 5 minutes). Makes 22.
* A reference to the Barbara Streisand movie, Yentl, in which Barbs dresses up as a boy in order to enrol into school. It's all very Mrs Doubtfire/Some Like it Hot, and a girl falls in love with Barbs-boy because he is so sensitive. There's a line in the movie where the lovelorn girl exclaims "You bake apples!".
8 comments:
Forget the recipe, send me some biscuits!
Love ma biscuit's,I'll have to try this..:)
Nice blog.
oooh yum! I HAVE to give you my carrotcake recipe.
xxB
onscreen: I could try, but they'd be stale crumbs by the time you got 'em.
eb: you should get hold of the Edmonds book. There are tons of biscuit recipes in there.
randall: Good luck, and don't burn them like I nearly did.
boudica: oh no you don't. I absolutely love carrot cake, but I'm allergic to carrots!
Allergic to carrots? I've never heard of that but that stinks.
So, what do you call 'biscuits' then if that's your equivalent for 'cookies'?
I saw Yentl a long time ago but I can't remember anything from it.
glomgold: well you have now! What you call biscuits, I think we call scones.
Almost any ginger-related biscuit recipe I've tried never has enough ginger or other spices in it. I always add in what I think looks like enough, which is invariably aboyt 4x more than recommended. They taste better that way though.
the skirt: I know what you mean. I think I'm a relative ginger-fiend though.
small one: hiya Jen! The link should tell you what golden syrup is...it's basically boiled down sugar and water (but there's more to it that than obviously).
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