No such thing as Anzac cookies

The first thing I ever made all by myself was Anzac biscuits. I was driven to do my own baking for two significant reasons: one, most commercial Anzac biscuits were crunchy; and two, all commercial Anzac biscuits contained coconut.

With the help of Family Circle: Irresistible Biscuits, Cookies & Shortbread (Murdoch Books, 1993), I developed a modified recipe for chewy Anzac biscuits consisting of no coconut but more oats and half the sugar but an extra 1/2 tablespoon of golden syrup. I brought these into work on Tuesday and they were enjoyed by all.

The other day a gift arrived from a PR company. The package contained Anzac cookies. Now, I'm the kind of person who calls a spade a spade and a cookie a cookie. Anzac biscuits ARE NEVER COOKIES. This is not some anti-American spiel against cookies, it is a recognition of the sad indictment that is poor education encompassing both the meaning of words and culinary difference.

In general, biscuits are hard and you should be able to munch on them noisily (unless they are chewy Anzacs...). They are generally flat in appearance as their ability to 'rise' is NOT a key factor in their making. If you were to break them, you would be able to snap them off. Biscuits can be sweet or savoury.

Cookies are 'little cakes', which means they are doughy. They are always sweet. If you were to break them they would crumble. Their key characteristic is that they have more 'air' in them and thus tend to be puffy or chunky.

Anzac biscuits are never and have never been cookies. When the recipe was developed last century, the women who invented them didn't even know what cookies were, as they would have come from Anlgo-Saxon stock which exclusively dealt with biscuits. Even mine, which are chewy rather than crunchy, do not become cookies because of that trait.

What would need to happen to Anzac biscuits to turn them into Anzac cookies? Well, the Anzacs never ate cookies so whatever modification made to the biscuit recipe to make cookies would render the Anzac adjective redundant. Perhaps Anzac biscuit-like cookies would be more accurate? Oatmeal cookies are probably most similar to Anzac biscuits and the main difference in the result probably comes from the beating of the butter and sugar (making the mixture fluffy) before adding the other ingredients.

By the way, I make cookies too. I like them and I'm getting pretty good at making them. I just hate the term 'Anzac cookies'.

P.S: According to my analysis, this means that the 'cookies' you get at McDonald's – the little kiddie ones you get in the box that are shaped like McDonald's characters – are actually biscuits.