This recipe is presented in two different formats. Select the style according to your level of expertise in the kitchen.
Ingredients
- 125g butter, melted
- 1 tablespoon (20ml) golden syrup
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
- ½ cup (110g) sugar
- 2 cups (180g) rolled oats
- ¾ cup (100g) plain flour
- 2 tablespoons (40ml) boiling water
Procedure
- Mix oats, sugar and flour.
- Mix golden syrup, soda and boiling water. While frothing add melted butter and pour into dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly,.
- Drop in spoonfuls on to tray allowing room for mixture to spread.
- Bake at 160°C 18-20 minutes.
- Cool on cake cooler.
Source: Cookery The Australian Way (3rd ed.), McDonnell, C. & Williams, R., 1980
Ingredients
- 125g margarine
- 2 tablespoons (40ml) golden syrup
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
- ¾ cup caster sugar
- ¼ cup desecrated coconut—you can use desiccated coconut if you can’t find the other kind
- 2 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup plain flour
- 2 tablespoons (40ml) boiling water
Procedure
OK ... this is the bloke version. Let’s look at the ingredients first:
- I use [125ml] olive oil instead of margarine—it’s a lot healthier for you and some of us know that olive oil is a good way of increasing your HDL, ie your good cholesterol. If it was a choice of having half-a-dozen cod liver oil tablets every morning, or having a couple of Anzac biscuits made with olive oil, I know what I’d rather have. Don’t be tempted to substitute 20W50 instead ... OK?
- This is about the only recipe I know that uses golden syrup which, frankly, isn’t good for much else.
- I use baking soda instead of bicarb. soda. All blokes know that you buy bicarb. soda from hardware stores; it’s used for cleaning drains ... and some people even brush their teeth in the stuff.
- You can use any kind of sugar, ’cept, p’raps, the sugar you use to make homebrew beer. Caster sugar just seems to work.
- Most blokes probably have half a box of rolled oats lying around somewhere; usually they’re a left-over from the girlfriend who stayed overnight one weekend back in ’98, who whinged about not having anything healthy to eat for breakfast, and you’ve only considered their potential as a surface preparation prior to painting the walls.
OK, this is really simple:
- Put the golden syrup and olive oil (or margarine) into a saucepan on low heat and mix it together. The original recipe I have says “allow it to cool” but I reckon that’s a furphy designed to put you off cooking. Just proceed with the rest of the steps using the saucepan as your mixing container left on the stovetop with the heat turned off - this approach also saves washin’ up lots of things.
- Chuck all the other recipes into the saucepan. Don’t get too gung-ho, just do ’em each, one at a time and mix ’em through with a spoon. I don’t know what the boiling water is s’posed to do but, when you consider that you’re puttin’ in 2 cups of stuff that has the consistency of dried cardboard, I guess it’s to soften the oats ... or it’s to help mix the flour. One or th’ other.
- You need some flat oven trays. Place non-waxed/greaseproof paper on the trays (you can buy non-waxed paper at any good hardware store—look in the carpentry section and ask for “tracing paper”). Alternatively you can tear a couple of sheets out of last year’s yellow pages, but I wouldn’t.
- Spoon out the icky-sticky mixture onto the paper. Don’t ask me how much to spoon out. Here’s where you can get creative and make your biscuits as small, or man-sized, as you want. Just remember, though, the baking soda will make the things rise when they’re bein’ cooked, so don’t put the dollops of mixture too close together.
- Now for the tricky bit: you have to use an oven. I know, the last time you used it was when you were bakin’ the enamel back on the Holden rocker cover in ’72 and you’ve been intendin’ to recalibrate the thermostat ever since. Don’t sweat it: the slight hint of benzene will give your cookies that Mount Panorama atmosphere to ’em. Turn the oven to 150°C and put the trays roughly in the middle (not too close to the top or they’ll burn) for between 15-20 minutes; I use the barbie as an oven but make sure the trays aren’t directly over the gas flame.
- When the bickies are a nice golden brown, take ’em out of the oven—use your brains, guys, and handle the trays with a towel or a set of welder’s gloves—women can ignore this instruction ’cause they’ve got asbestos fingers, ’cept for the prissy ones who use a thing called an “oven mitt”.
- Resist temptation: leave the bickies on the tray for, say, 10 minutes before you try to eat ’em. They get harder the longer you let ’em cool down.
Source: The Quoroom, 2009