Smash Book Recipes ~ Anzac Biscuits

Hi Blogging Buddies,

It is Saturday night here and I thought I would write a quick post.  This is another one of the recipe cards I have made with goodies from The Craft Garden.  I made this recipe card using paper and a note card and flowers from the Fairy Flora collection which you can buy here.  The recipe is a great Australian favourite - Anzac Biscuits.  You can click on the picture to enlarge and copy down the recipe if you wish.

 I love these two gorgeous metal butterflies...

I would like to enter the following challenges:

Cute Card Thursday - A tweet and a flutter

Raise the Bar - Something Yummy

Saturday Challenge - Anything Goes

Below is a close-up of the flowers...

I cut and pasted a bit of info on the history of the Anzac Biscuit for anybody interested.  The information came directly from this site here.

The recipe for what we now call Anzac Biscuits long pre-dates the Gallipoli Landings. It can be traced back to Scotland and the traditional Scottish Oat cakes.  The name has as much to do with Australia's desire to recognise Anzac as with the idea that they were actually part of the staple diet at Gallipoli.  They are one of the few things that are able to be legally marketed in Australia using the word ANZAC which is protected by Federal Legislation. 

During World War 1, the wives, mothers and girlfriends of the Australian soldiers were concerned for the nutritional value of the food being supplied to their men. Here was a problem. Any food they sent to the fighting men had to be carried in the ships of the Merchant Navy. Most of these were lucky to maintain a speed of ten knots (18.5 kilometers per hour). Most had no refrigerated facilities, so any food sent had to be able to remain edible after periods in excess of two months. A body of women came up with the answer - a biscuit with all the nutritional value possible. The basis was a Scottish recipe using rolled oats. These oats were used extensively in Scotland, especially for a heavy porridge that helped counteract the extremely cold climate. 

The ingredients they used were: rolled oats, sugar, plain flour, coconut, butter, golden syrup or treacle, bi-carbonate of soda and boiling water. All these items did not readily spoil. At first the biscuits were called Soldiers’ Biscuits, but after the landing on Gallipoli, they were renamed ANZAC Biscuits.  A point of interest is the lack of eggs to bind the ANZAC biscuit mixture together. Because of the war, many of the poultry farmers had joined the services, thus, eggs were scarce. The binding agent for the biscuits was golden syrup or treacle.

As the war drew on, many groups like the CWA (Country Women’s Association), church groups, schools and other women’s organisations devoted a great deal of time to the making of ANZAC biscuits.  To ensure that the biscuits remained crisp, they were packed in used tins, such as Billy Tea tins. The tins were airtight, thus no moisture in the air was able to soak into the biscuits and make them soft.

I hope you are having a lovely weekend.

Take care,