Vegan Anzac biscuits
Vegan Anzac biscuits
Even though I was born in Australia and lived there for 23 years, it has been a full 15 years since I moved abroad and I’m occasionally prone to a bout of homesickness. Now that I’m living in Greece, and previous to that I lived in London, my old life in Australia feels a very long way away.
I have a few things that I still follow that connect me to home, the first being cricket (which, according to Ania, is a sport based on standing in a field where everything is called a wicket) and the second being these delicious vegan Anzac biscuits.
As many Australians will know, the 26th of January is Australia day, which I’m always bittersweet about celebrating as it is the day that Australia was effectively taken from the aborigines by the British settlers. When I lived in London, Australians celebrated it by drinking copious quantities of Fosters (which is brewed in the UK) and dancing to Crowded House (which is founded by a New Zealander) in the Walkabout chain of Australian-theme pubs (owned by a British company). Naturally, I never saw the point of this, but making Anzac biscuits was a tradition I did enjoy every Australia day.
The word Anzac refers to the ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’ and the reason the biscuits have adopted this name is because the legend has it that they were sent to the troops during World War I. As the biscuits don’t contain eggs or other ingredients that spoil quickly, they were perfect to ship to troops because they would still be intact on arrival. I remember once being sent a piece of my cousin’s wedding cake that I didn’t receive until 2 months after it was sent and I have seen firsthand why sending a vegan Anzac biscuit would be a better idea!
Normally these biscuits are made nearer to Anzac Day (which is a war remembrance day – April 25th), but I like to make them for Australia day as well because they are soooo good.
Whether you are sending these biscuits to a family member in a war zone or just making them so you can eat them all by yourself on the couch, these biscuits are rich, oatey and delicious. So if you are missing Australia, bake a big batch of these and even people that don’t come from Australia, don’t care about Australia, and don’t have any idea what an Anzac is, will be happy that you did…
- 100 g / 1 cup oats
- 85 g / ¾ cup (slightly heaped) desiccated coconut
- 100 g / heaped ¾ cup AP wheat flour
- 100 g / ½ cup caster sugar
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 2 tbsp water, hot
- 100 g / 3.5 oz vegan butter, margarine or refined coconut oil
- 1 tbsp maple syrup or golden syrup
- Preheat the oven to 180° C / 355° F.
- Put the oats, desiccated coconut, flour and sugar in a medium mixing bowl and mix well.
- Melt the vegan butter in a small saucepan over a low heat, add the maple syrup and stir until combined.
- In a small bowl, dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the 2 tbsp of hot water and add to the melted butter mixture.
- Add the melted butter mixture to the dry ingredients and stir gently until it is mixed well. At this point the mixture should stick together easily, but you may need to add a touch more hot water if you are having with that. Please be careful – add it very gradually, in small amounts.
- Roll mixture into balls with your hands (it should make 20 at 25 g each), flatten each ball so that you have 1 cm / 0.4″ high cookies, and place them 2 cm / 1″ apart on a paper lined baking tray.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes until golden and transfer to a wire rack to cool.
You could use another liquid sweetener like rice syrup or maple syrup. Hope this helps. Ania
Super simple, quick and easy to follow & most importantly so delicious!
I'll be making then again soon! 😋
I am glad you enjoyed these. I hear what you are saying, but this is very tricky. Veganism is about minimising needless animal suffering and exploitation and most vegans recognise that in today's world, no one is able to live a life that is 100% cruelty free and attempting to do so will make you go insane (especially in the face of everybody else's indifference!). What you describe happens when it comes to any type of vegetable/fruit harvest and while it is horrible and we obviously wish it didn't happen we do have to eat something so most people draw the line at not eating foods that are animal derived (like meat, dairy, eggs but also honey or sugar purified using bone char). Hope it makes sense. Ania
Thank you. Great info
Looks fantastic as usual!
Can I replace the coconut with something?
I have not tried but I recon ground almonds will also be nice. Ania
Thanks for making this recipe! YUM!🍪
That's great to hear. I think you could replace some of the fat with pureed pumpkin and use pumpkin spice, but it will make the cookies less crunchy I think. Ania
Soft, pillowy, but with a slight crunch.
Great job!
With a friend coming over who loves a good munch I had a quick trawl for a quick biscuit recipe.. she's not vegan but trying to be more plant based...many suggestions inc: how not to die has seen many changes in her lifestyle and I am encouraging her with my vegan food/plant based diet.
So using what I had at home I have to tell you how amazing these worked out. I only had spelt flour and my baking soda was dead, so I added baking powder. I also had a mix of vegan Marg and coconut butter...it all worked...I also added 70g of muesli, which I blitzed in a food processor and 15g of spelt to make up for the desiccated coconut ...only other adjustment was 2 extra tablespoons of hot water as the spelt flour need more moisture to enable the dough to be doughy!!!
So I really messed with your recipe and guess what they were still brilliant and that is priceless, sometimes I find that internet recipes can be hit and miss ...
I was also worried as your recipe says 100g = 1 cup!! So i ignored the cups and stayed with the 100grams as a cup I think is normally 240grams... Ho HUM
Thank you again for a great biscuit recipe that worked even tho I tweaked it a awful lot!!!
PS: A US cup has 240 ml not grams. As for grams, it depends what is in it - a cup of oats is about 100 g, a cup of flour is 126 g etc.
They are not extra per se, it's out attempt at converting grams into cups. 100 g of flour is over 1/2 cup so adding another tablespoon makes up for the difference. Hope that makes sense! Ania
I'm sorry to hear that you've had trouble and I will be honest I cannot figure out why. I made these cookies several times myself and many of my readers have too and no one else reported similar problems. As for greasiness and crumbliness that would be too much fat in the final product (60 g extra oil is over 50% more of what we used). If you decide to give these another go, I would allow the mixture to sit for a few minutes after you've mixed everything together. If it's still too dry then, try adding a tiny amount (teaspoon or a couple) of hot water to bind it. Hope that helps! Ania
I'm sorry to hear that your cookies didn't quite stuck together, but glad to hear you enjoyed the taste. Using raw coconut oil should have no bearing as long as it was melted before adding dry ingredients. Did you weigh dry ingredient or used cups for measuring? Is it possible that the measurements were a touch out? Ania
Excellent vegan recipe's though, I would love to try some of your dinners, they look amazing.
Jesus bless you :-)))
We had no trouble in our numerous test batches but I have taken it down to half a teaspoon just because I think that will minimise risk whilst having no affect on the quality of the cookies!
1 tsp is a pretty standard amount of baking soda to the amount of dry ingredients if you have a look at non-vegan Anzacs and we didn't detect any funky flavour during testing but feel free to adjust to your liking, of course. Ania
What I would do in this case is simply substitute 100 g of flour with your usual gluten-free flour mix (I tend to use a homemade mixture of buckwheat flour (about 60%), rice flour (30%) and a bit of corn starch (10%)). To mimic gluten in GF goods, you typically add small amount of xanthan gum, but as gluten isn't necessary in cookies (as opposed to bread or pasta), I would do the first batch without it (unless your gluten-free flour mix contains some already) and see how you like them. Good luck! Ania