anzac day

nan's anzac biscuits

Last year’s batch, made in London, to Nan’s original recipe!

Last year’s batch, made in London, to Nan’s original recipe!

This is the only recipe I have ever used for Anzac biscuits. They are just the way I like them and remember them from childhood - slightly soft and chewy!  Tom loves them too because they taste like his childhood favourite, flapjack!

Nan's ANZAC biscuits

Makes about 40 (I usually double the recipe!)

1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup plain flour
3/4 cup coconut [if you don't have this use an extra 3/4 cup oats]
3/4 cup sugar (brown, raw or white)
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
2 tablespoons boiling water
125g butter, melted
2 tablespoons golden syrup (I often use rice malt if that’s all I have)

Mix all dry ingredients. Dissolve bicarb soda in boiling water and add to melted butter and golden syrup. Add to dry ingredients and mix well. Place in teaspoonfuls on a greased tray.  I roll them into balls in my hands first, which really does remind me of making these as a kid! 

Bake in a moderately slow oven (160 C, 325 F) for 15 minutes.  If you want harder biscuits cook for a few minutes longer.  Let them cool and then store in an airtight container.

They last a long time - they were originally designed to be sent to troops overseas so they had to travel well and not go off for months and months - but in this house they last as long as my and Tom's willpower allows!

Happy ANZAC Day - lest we forget.

anzac day, 1949

We remember nothing. Maybe for a year or two. Maybe most of a life, if we live. Maybe. But then we will die, and who will ever understand any of this?"
- Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to The Deep North

The photo above is from my vintage photo collection, and was a gift to me from my friend Erin. On the back is scrawled in pencil, "Anzac Day 1949". Only four years after the end of the Second World War, when the horror of it all would have still been so fresh.

What did these young men see? What did they endure? And what happened afterwards, what sorts of lives did they go on to live? I look into the eyes and faces of these young men, too young, and can only imagine.

Photographs like this can hold hundreds of stories. I hope all of them got the chance to be told, and remembered.