ANZAC Day is Tuesday 25 April. It’s time to get baking!
I’ve baked a few versions of the famous biscuit over the years, but since I discovered the “real deal”, the authentic recipe researched by The Cook and the Curator, the wonderful blog of Museums of History New South Wales, I haven’t looked back!
So here’s the recipe. Make these ANZAC bikkies and you will not only get the real thing, they will be utterly delicious!
I add golden syrup, as I love the toffee flavour it imparts. Most recipes do include golden syrup.
Somewhere I read in a recipe that browning the butter after melting it gives a greater depth of flavour. It really does! To compensate for the fact that you lose a little bit of the butter by browning it, I have added another 15g of butter to the recipe.
The Cook and the Curator note that coconut is an optional ingredient and it wasn’t added till the 1930s. By all means add some to to your biscuits, but personally I’m not a fan.
It really is a straightforward ANZAC biscuit recipe – very easy to put together and quick to bake.
Here is the link to the original recipe from The Cook and the Curator if you would like to know more.
Ingredients
165g salted butter
180g rolled oats
120g plain flour
125g brown sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons boiling water
Method
Preheat oven to 150 degrees C. Line 2 oven trays with baking paper.
Place the butter in a small saucepan and heat until melted. Once the butter is melted, cook for about 3-4 minutes, swirling the pan often. The butter will foam and turn a golden brown. Remove from the heat and put into a bowl to cool slightly.
Mix the rolled oats, flour and sugar in a large bowl.
Combine the melted butter and golden syrup in the same saucepan. Add the bicarbonate of soda and boiling water and whisk to combine. Remove from heat.
Add the butter/golden syrup mixture and stir until well combined.
Take tablespoons of mixture and make into balls. Place the balls onto the baking trays, allowing space for spreading. Don’t flatten the balls!
Bake for 15 minutes or until biscuits are dark golden brown. Remove the biscuits from the oven and cool on the trays. The biscuits will firm up as they cool. Now remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Store in an airtight tin. They keep well for a few days.
Another recipe from the Easter vault! A quick cookie/bickie that you can make in a lot less time than it takes to make hot cross buns. But maybe make these as well! This is a good recipe to make with kids too. The recipe is based on one from Donna Hay, with some tweaks.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line 2 baking trays with baking tray. Cream the butter and sugar in a food processor. Add the eggs and vanilla, making sure the eggs are well incorporated. Add the lemon zest, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk and sultanas to the food processor and mix in. Be careful not to over mix in case you break up the sultanas. Refrigerate the mixture for 30 minutes or until firm. Roll tablespoons of the mixtures into balls and place on the baking trays. Bake between 10-15 minutes, depending on the hotness of your oven, until the cookies are pale brown. Remove from the oven and cool on the baking trays. To make the icing, place the icing sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and mix to a paste. Place the icing mixture in a piping bag and pipe a cross on each cookie. You don’t have to be too precise, the flavour of the cookies is more important than a beautifully executed item! Or that’s what I think anyway.
Stone fruit is in season in late summer here in Sydney. I love cooking with plums, particularly blood plums with their wonderful ruby red colour.
This cake is made in the form of a traybake, great for serving a crowd of people. It’s not too difficult, the only tricky part is roasting the almonds in the oven.
You could serve it on its own, or with a sprinkling of Demerara sugar, or make a simple lemon drizzle icing and haphazardly dress the cake!
Ingredients
100g blanched almonds
50g whole almonds, skin on
150g butter
150g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond essence
3 free-range eggs
75g plain flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
8 plums, cut into quarters or eighths
2 teaspoons Demerara sugar + extra for sprinkling
Lemon drizzle icing
150g icing sugar
Enough lemon juice to drizzle over the cake
Method Preheat the oven 150 degrees C, 130 degrees C fan. When the oven reaches temperature, put all the almonds on a baking tray and cook until just brown, about 20 minutes.
Turn the oven up to 180 degrees C, 160 degrees C fan. Grease a 9”x 13” rectangular cake pan.
Blitz half of the almonds in a food processor until fine crumbs. Remove, and blitz the other half so that they are still quite chunky. Remove from the food processor. There’s no need to wash it – just use again for the cake batter.
Beat butter and sugar in the food processor until pale and well creamed. Add vanilla extract and almond essence.
Add the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour at the same time with each egg. Adding a little flour now helps stop the batter from curdling. Mix in the food processor until each egg is incorporated. Mix in the rest of the dry ingredients including nuts by pulsing carefully. Some of the nuts will still be quite chunky which will give texture to your cake.
Spread the cake batter in the pan, smoothing the top with a spatula. Arrange the plum pieces on top of the batter. Some pieces of fruit will stay on top of the batter, some will sink – it doesn’t really matter!
Sprinkle the Demerara sugar over the plum pieces on top of the batter.
Bake for 30 – 35 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. If the cake is browning too quickly, cover the top with aluminium foil to prevent burning. When cooked, remove from the oven and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
When the cake has cooled slightly, carefully remove from the cake pan onto to a wire rack to cool completely.
You can serve as is, or with a sprinkling of Demerara sugar, or with a lemon drizzle icing.
Make the lemon drizzle icing by combining the icing sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and drizzle over the cake with a fork.
October 2022 and I’m back in Shetland, this time to pursue food and history. In 2019 it was all about stunning coastal walks and brilliant wildlife. And Shetland made an impression. My musings on this visit are recorded here.
So with my long suffering but enthusiastic travelling companion in tow, I certainly got to grips in a determined way with the culture and the stories of Shetland food.
A highlight was A Taste of Shetland Food and Drink Festival – blogged recently here. What an amazing experience. A really good way to encounter local produce and producers. I tasted samples of tablet, sponge cake, sourdough, bannocks, oatcake and some gin to wash it all down. Have I left anything out?
Some wonderful restaurants too, in Lerwick where we were based, doing innovative food with local, seasonal food. I think I had seafood wherever I went – Shetland seafood is gorgeous.
Some highlights were beautiful scallops and mussels at No 88 Kitchen and Bar, exquisitely presented dishes at Da Steak Hoose and the best crème brûlée ever at C’est La Vie!
But I need to do a big shout out to the Cake Fridges of Shetland – what a fantastic, quirky idea!
These are fridges literally set up on the roadside where the owner bakes cakes and treats which you buy by putting money in an honesty box. And that’s it! Shetland is such a community minded place that people are honest.
I visited The Cake Fridge in Aith – the original cake fridge, and bought hot coffee and tiffin – a kind of chocolate slice. Very Shetland and quite delicious.
On the island of Unst, seemingly in the middle of nowhere we were delighted to find a cake fridge, this time more accurately a cake dolls’ house! And on a cold and windy day we bought shortbread, more tiffin and tablet to keep us fuelled for exploring this most northerly island.
History and archeology were also on the agenda. And we struck gold when we met the eloquent and knowledgeable Chris Dyer from Garths Croft on the island of Bressay. Chris is an archeologist, historian and farmer, who is a passionate enthusiast for native and heritage breeds and sustainable farming.
An afternoon spent at Garths Croft was an immersive experience in the workings of a small croft. Readers of this blog may be aware of my love of sheep – and I was fascinated by the sheep that Chris breeds for colour. And I was particularly taken by Dinky, a sheep that had been hand reared from birth by Chris. I admit to being a bit sentimental where sheep are concerned…
Chris also is highly informed on local food and the importance of food miles in agriculture and food production in Shetland. We ate some outstanding local dishes on Chris’ recommendations.
One of those recommendations was the wonderful Speldiburn Cafe which we visited when we were on Bressay. Now here was great Shetland food – soups, bannocks. cakes and tiffin, all home made and all served with a welcoming smile!
We were able to tap into Chris’ other great passion, archeology, when we drove up to Unst, the most northerly point of the UK, driving across two islands via two ferries to reach this historic place. This bleak and windswept island is evocative, thought to be the first point of contact in the North Atlantic of the Vikings, and a treasure trove of archeological sites pertaining to Viking history.
At Haroldswick, a replica Viking Long House, where we had lunch, and a Viking ship the Skidbladner, give visitors some idea of Viking life. The replica ship actually made the voyage from Sweden to Shetland. Apparently bound for the United States in 2000, the ship stopped off in Unst where it remains today. Getting inside the ship gave me a real appreciation of how hard those Viking sea journeys must have been.
I had visited Unst in 2019, staying at Saxa Vord, at the service quarters of an old RAF base. Some of the base facilities are now being developed as part of the planned SaxaVord Spaceport, creating a successful, internationally recognised “new space business”. Today however Saxa Vord is abandoned, and we wandered around the deserted site. Another reminder of the historical strategic importance of the northerly isle – to the Viking invaders and latterly to those seeking to defend the UK on its northerly tip.
I think of all the sites we visited the ruins of Framgord Chapel and graveyard left the greatest impression on me.
Chris brought us to this special place above the beach at Sandwick. The chapel probably dates to the 12th Century. The graveyard was what fascinated me. With sweeping views of the beach, the graveyard is a testament to history and spirituality. Remarkably it’s still in use today, and contemporary headstones lie side by side with early Viking Christian graves.
On a more poignant note there is the burial place and memorial to crew members of a Norwegian ship torpedoed in 1940 during World War 2. The lifeboat was wrecked at Muness in Unst. The wild seas are still the graveyard of latter day northern seafarers.
We saw much more on Unst, and this would only have been the tip of the iceberg. The archeological treasures of Unst are numerous and bear more research.
I would add here that any trip to Shetland to discover its history is enhanced by visiting Shetland Museum in Lerwick – a really interesting and informative collection.
Of course I did and saw a lot more! I just wanted to give a snapshot, the highlights, of a memorable visit to wonderful Shetland. Highly recommended.
Brownies? Blondies? Both excellent sweet treats in a fudgy, gooey kind of way. This one is a sweet version of a brownie, made with white chocolate, so technically definitely a blondie!
I got the inspiration a few years back from a post on the internet, no longer around. The general idea is that raspberries and white chocolate are a match made in heaven, so I ran with that idea!
The blondies are made with plain flour only, no baking powder, but they seem to rise all the same.
Ingredients
115g unsalted butter
180g white chocolate chopped
115g caster sugar
2 free-range eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla paste
125g plain flour +1tablespoon flour
1 cup frozen raspberries
Method
Preheat the oven to to 180 degrees C or 170 degrees fan forced.
Grease and line a square 20 cm x 20 cm baking tin with baking paper. You could use a 18cm x 27cm baking tin instead.
Melt the butter and 100g of the white chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat and stir until smooth.
Beat the sugar, free-range eggs and vanilla paste in a bowl until the mixture is thick and pale.
Gently combine the the butter and white chocolate mixture into the egg and sugar mixture.
Gently fold 1/3 of the flour into the batter and repeat twice until all the flour is all incorporated.
Put half the raspberries into the tablespoon of flour then gently fold the raspberries/flour into the mixture.
Pour the mixture into the tin and place the remaining white chocolate pieces and raspberries over the top of the mixture.
Bake for 30- 35 minutes. The blondies will have risen but will still be slightly soft in the middle.
Yesterday, Saturday, I made my annual batch of ANZAC biscuits, that delicious treat associated with Australian and New Zealand soldiers of the First World War, in preparation for ANZAC Day 2022 on 25 April.
The wonderful blog “The Cook and the Curator”, from the team at Sydney Living Museums, has done some research into the origin of ANZAC biscuits.
“There has been much debate as to the origins of the iconic Anzac biscuit, and whether they were sent in care packages to soldiers at war, or if they were made by soldiers at ‘the front’. They were certainly enjoyed by Australians long before the First World War, but under different names.”
The Cook and the Curator also note that coconut is an optional ingredient and it wasn’t added till the 1930s. By all means add some to to your biscuits, but personally I’m not a fan.
My recipe is based on this authentic recipe, with a small tweak or two.
I add golden syrup, as I love the toffee flavour it imparts. Most recipes do include golden syrup.
Somewhere I read in a recipe that browning the butter after melting it gives a greater depth of flavour. It really does! To compensate for the fact that you lose a little bit of the butter by browning it, I have added another 15g of butter to the recipe.
It really is a straightforward ANZAC biscuit recipe – very easy to put together and quick to bake.
Eat the biscuits on the day they are baked but they will keep well too, if there are any left!
Ingredients
165g salted butter
180g rolled oats
120g plain flour
125g brown sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons boiling water
Method
Preheat oven to 150 degrees C. Line 2 oven trays with baking paper.
Place the butter in a small saucepan and heat until melted. Once the butter is melted, cook for about 3-4 minutes, swirling the pan often. The butter will foam and turn a golden brown. Remove from the heat and put into a bowl to cool slightly.
Mix the rolled oats, flour and sugar in a large bowl.
Combine the melted butter and golden syrup in the same saucepan. Add the bicarbonate of soda and boiling water and whisk to combine. Remove from heat.
Add the butter/golden syrup mixture and stir until well combined.
Take tablespoons of mixture and make into balls. Place the balls onto the baking trays, allowing space for spreading. Don’t flatten the balls!
Bake for 15 minutes or until biscuits are dark golden brown. Remove the biscuits from the oven and cool on the trays. The biscuits will firm up as they cool. Now remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Store in an airtight tin. They keep well for a few days.
I’m a big fan of Claire Ptak and her bakery in London. It was a delight to visit last time I was able to travel to the UK, pre Covid! I love her book “The Violet Bakery Cookbook”, and some of the recipes in it have inspired this one.
These tasty morsels are a cross between scones and biscuits. They are quite dense, with ground rolled oats and blueberries.
The mixture is very crumbly and will be difficult to bring together into a dough, particularly with the frozen blueberries. But don’t worry, just pat the mixture into shape and by resting it, you can cut the rounds from the mixture.
Here’s my recipe. This makes 12 smallish scones. You could double the quantities for larger, more substantial scones.
Ingredients 100g rolled oats 150g plain flour 3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda 1/2 baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 50g raw sugar or brown sugar Zest of half an orange 125g cold unsalted butter cut into 1 cm chunks 150g creme fraiche 125g frozen blueberries
Method Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C fan forced. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
Blitz the rolled oats in a food processor until finely ground. Mix all the dry ingredients plus the orange zest in a bowl or in a food processor. Cut in the cold butter by hand until the mixture resembles large breadcrumbs, or you can continue to use a food processor on pulse, but be careful not to overwork the dough.
Quickly stir in the creme fraiche until just mixed in. Stir in the frozen blueberries.
Turn the mixture out onto a floured board, and pat into a square about 3 or 4cms thick. Rest for 5 minutes at least, even 10 minutes.
Using a 6cm cutter, cut out rounds and place onto the baking sheet. You will probably get 8 or 9 from the dough, then you will need to gather up the remains of the dough and pat together (don’t re-roll) before cutting out the last few rounds.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until the rounds are brown on top. You could check after 20 minutes to see how they are coming along. Take out of the oven and wait until the oat scones are cool before serving.
Serve on their own – they are sweet enough – or with homemade berry jam and Greek yoghurt.
I made this shortbread for New Year’s Day yesterday. I think shortbread is one of the best things to come out of Scotland, not forgetting whisky!
It’s based on a Jamie Oliver recipe for chocolate orange shortbread, original recipe here. I left out the chocolate for simplicity’s sake, but by all means add this in. I think the orange is the star of this recipe!
It’s super simple. I made it in the food processor. After baking just leave in the tin before cutting into fingers.
Great for New Year – but don’t wait till then – a very nice tea time or coffee time treat any time of the year!
Ingredients
150g butter at room temperature
200g plain flour
50g golden caster sugar or raw sugar, plus extra to sprinkle
Zest of an orange
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Grease a 20cm square baking tin and line with baking paper.
Put the butter, flour, sugar and the finely grated zest of half the orange into the bowl of a food processor.
Gently pulse the ingredients until they just come together- don’t overmix.
Tip the mixture into the lined baking tin. With your hands pat the dough into the tin, being careful not to knead it. You will end up with a layer about 1cm thick. Don’t worry if it’s looks a bit messy, it will look fine after baking.
Prick the dough all over with a fork.
Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly golden brown.
Take out of the oven, and leaving in the tin, mark fingers using a sharp knife. There’s no need to cut through – it’s just to help cut the fingers once the shortbread is cold.
Sprinkle over a little more sugar, and grate over the zest of the other half of the orange.
Leave to cool completely, and then cut the shortbread into fingers along the marked lines.
Remove the fingers from the tin.
The shortbread will keep well in an airtight tin for a few days!
St Ncholas Day was 6 December – so I’m a little late in posting this recipe for these delicious spicy biscuits, traditionally made for that day. But they are also eaten anytime during the Christmas season.
They are so fragrant with Christmas spice, and they make perfect edible gifts. Making them really puts you in the Christmas mood too!
This recipe is based on one I found from the brilliant people at SBS television here in Australia. You really need to stamp designs on them, and I have a couple of heavy duty Nordic ware stamps. I also have a fabulous maamoul mold, a traditional Middle Eastern pastry and biscuit mold. You put biscuit dough inside the maamoul, then turn the dough out with a lovely imprint.
But you could just as easily use any biscuit cutters.
The recipe called for a mixture of Christmas spices but I used a St Nicholas Spekulaas spice mix from Gewürzhaus Spice House in Sydney. I have included the ingredients for the individual spices as well as the pre-prepared mix.
Ingredients
250g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
150g firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon each of ground nutmeg, ginger and cardamom
(Or 1 tablespoon St Nicholas Spekulaas spice mix)
1/4 teaspoon salt
150g cold butter
Method
Put the flour, baking powder, sugar, spices, salt and butter in a food processor and whiz until you have a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs.
Add a tablespoon of iced water and pulse until mixture just comes together. Do this carefully – don’t overmix!
The dough will be quite loose. Turn it out onto a board or bench top and bring together into a large ball. Wrap the ball in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes to firm the dough and make it easier to work with.
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.
Remove the dough from the fridge. Roll the dough out – don’t go too thin or it will be hard to cut – and use any kind of biscuit cutter to stamp out shapes. Or if you have biscuit stamps or a maamoul mold use those!
Place the biscuits on the baking trays. Roll out any scraps of dough again and stamp out more shapes. Refrigerate the trays for 20 minutes to help the biscuits keep their shape.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. These biscuits are quite soft in the middle so they won’t bake hard.
Once cool enough to handle, remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Store biscuits in an airtight container for a week, or you can freeze the biscuits too!
This year I baked my Soul Cakes early to be ready for Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. They were traditionally made to be handed out on these special days.
“The cakes, often simply referred to as souls, are given out to soulers who go from door to door, singing and saying prayers for the souls of the givers and their friends.”
The musician Sting has a version of the traditional song “Soul Cake” on his album “If on a Winter’s Night”. Here are some lyrics.
“A soul cake, a soul cake,
Please, good missus, a soul cake.
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry,
A soul cake, a soul cake,
Please, good missus, a soul cake.
One for Peter, two for Paul,
And three for Him that made us all.”
The little cakes are actually more like biscuits, and are delicious as they are full of spice and sultanas. They have a cross marked on the top too.
This batch of Soul Cakes are a little rough and ready! But taste great because of the spices.
Ingredients
100 g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
2 free-range egg yolks
250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 -1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon saffron (or more if necessary)
Zest of an orange
2 tbs milk
100g sultanas
Method
Put the softened butter, caster sugar and egg yolks in the bowl of a food processor and blitz until everything is combined and the mixture is creamy.
Sift the flour and spices, including the saffron. Put the mixture with the orange zest into the processor, blitzing for a couple of seconds only, then blitz in the milk a little at a time until the dough just comes together. Don’t over-mix! If the dough isn’t yellow enough, add a pinch more of saffron.
Stir in the sultanas by hand.
Form the dough into a rough ball, them roll into a sausage shape, with a rough diameter of about 50cm or 2 inches, or whatever size you want your soul cakes to be.
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C fan forced or 180 degrees C non fan forced.
Wrap in grease proof paper and chill in the fridge for a couple of hours or until you want to bake the cakes.
Bake for 15 minutes or until firm and just brown. Cool on a wire rack.
Line a baking tray with baking paper. Take the sausage from the fridge and cut into thick wedges. Place each wedge on the baking tray. At this stage you should cut a cross on the top of each soul cake.
Great eaten warm straight from the oven. The soul cakes can be frozen too, but eat on the traditional days if possible!
The Quirk and the Cool 