Oat and coconut (a.k.a.ANZAC) biscuits
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7/24/26 NOTE: a big thanks to friend and blog reader Shirley who discovered my recipe PDF was missing the baking soda - a very important ingredient! I’ve corrected and updated the link to the recipe.
Although we’ve been dealing with heat and wildfire smoke, we were fortunate to have had a perfect weather break recently for our yearly neighborhood cookout. Great turnout, good conversation and plenty of food. Steve and neighbor Don were at the griddle/grill doing up the brats and dogs. It’s summer, there’s no doubt about it.
While baking has been and is currently reserved for shorter projects and earlier in the day oven sessions, this recipe find from the NYT and chef Brian Levy caught my eye! Made with oats and coconut using an interesting stove top preparation for the dough, these are tasty indeed. Just another example of using Lyle’s Golden Syrup, an ingredient that adds a toasty caramel nuance to the flavor. Yum.
The story goes that during WWI (think Gallipoli) the Australian New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) were supplied with a hardtack kind of biscuit at the front, one that wouldn’t go stale. Further research tells me that the current iteration of these cookies became very popular down under in the years following the war and remain popular still. Web search “ANZAC biscuits” and you’ll find many references/recipes. Depending on the baking time the result is either chewy (shorter bake) or crispy/crunchy (longer bake). Either way I can vouch for their deliciousness!
Here’s the recipe PDF which includes a few comments on the different batches I baked.
I’ve already made them several times - for my first trial I opted to leave out the coconut and up the oats (just because); second round went with a portion of the coconut and subbed in chocolate pearls for the rest; third round went with the base recipe.
Mise for the first round sans coconut
Basically you need a saucepan and a mixing bowl (and smaller bowls for your mise if that’s how you roll). Oats, flour, coconut (if using), granulated sugar and salt go into the mixing bowl.
Unsalted butter, Lyle’s golden syrup, brown sugar and a little water go in the saucepan. Have 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda standing by. This is the fun part.
Warm and melt the ingredients in the saucepan. When the mixture just starts to bubble, remove it from the heat and stir in the baking soda. The mixture will foam up as seen below.
Pour the warm mixture over the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl and blend together.
Press the mixture into the bottom of the bowl, cover the surface directly with plastic wrap and let sit 5-10 minutes. This makes it easier to scoop.
For my first round I scooped generous one+-ish tablespoon sized portions, rolled them smooth then lightly push down to flatten a bit. You’ll need two sheet pans for the batch. They do spread so give them some room. The more you make them, the easier it will be to gauge that.
Oven at 325ºF. Bake for 19-20 minutes for a crispy, chewy result. My yield was 29 cookies with the first batch sans coconut.
First of two pans in the first round of baking
For the second batch I adjusted the oats a tad, used half the weight of the coconut in the recipe and replaced the other half with mini chocolate pearls. See the recipe for more detail!
A quick word on coconut - as you see below I used Trader Joe’s unsweetened “flake coconut” which is really what most of us think of as medium shredded. I do lightly toast it, cool and crush it up a bit before adding it into the mix.
Flake coconut is typically more likely to refer to large flat pieces of coconut, often used for garnish; shredded can also be more finely shredded than what I used here while desiccated coconut is typically much, much finer.
As for the chocolate pearls - oh Susan what were you thinking?! I had mixed the pearls in with the dry ingredients and, of course, when I poured the hot mixture over the dry - guess what - the chocolate melted toute de suite!
Not to worry - still delicious! My yield for this batch was 38 cookies using a tad smaller scoop. The chocolate added a lovely color as well as flavor.
For the third batch I followed the base recipe and purposefully made my scoops petite. Yield of 47 cookies! Whoa!
20 on the first pan
Oh that golden goodness
27 0n the second!
Just have fun with it!
Lastly, on a very different note - maybe it’s the reference to WWI regarding this cookie recipe, but I’d like to end with a bit of nostalgia (I’ve been experiencing a lot of that lately). . . . Dad was a navigator in a B-24 bomber during WWII. He died back in 1999 just a month or so after he turned 77, an age that we can’t help but think of now as “young” as we continue to age. And it’s been a touch over a year and a half already since Mom left this earthly life at the age of 97.
The current world seems so unusually disrupted (although historians tell us that “history repeats itself”), and I’m thankful my parents don’t have to experience the hatefulness and rancor that we’re seeing each and every day. OK. I’ve said it.
I’ve got a few things in the hopper for the blog plus I’m slowly working through my recipes, up dating posts and creating more links to recipe PDFs. Lots of work but it keeps me out of trouble. Take care all.
A memorial day visit to my parents’ gravesite
