A comfort from home … the story of Anzac biscuits
Do you make Anzac biscuits each Anzac Day? The sweet biscuit we know today as an Anzac Biscuit is actually a far cry from the biscuits that were the staple of our soldiers’ rations. Known as ‘hardtack biscuits’ the original biscuits were a nutritional substitute for bread and, as the name suggests, they were very, very hard. At Gallipoli, where the supply of fresh food and water was difficult to maintain, hardtack biscuits became notorious with the Gallipoli experience and are sometimes referred to as Anzac tiles or Anzac wafer biscuits. Soldiers often used ingenious methods to make hardtack biscuits easier to eat such as soaking them in water, grating them or adding jam. So where does the sweet Anzac biscuit that we know today come from? Recipes for oat and golden syrup Anzac biscuits began to appear in Australian recipe books from the 1920s. It is thought that as an eggless biscuit that lasts a reasonable amount of time, these sweet biscuits were included in comfort parcels sent to soldiers from families at home during the war and the recipe was widely published in the post-war era. No doubt the sweet biscuits would have been a more palatable and welcome addition to soldiers’ diets than the army-issue hardtack biscuits. Our recipe for Anzac Biscuits is simple and easy to make and produces a delightful biscuit that we’re sure you will enjoy.
