Let’s Make Cookies!

My favorite thing to do is cooking.  Since we have had this wonderful long time at home, I have been free to cook to my heart’s (and stomach’s) content.

About every three or four days I make a certain kind of cookies that Trish and I have in bed with coffee and hot chocolate each morning.  They are based of the ANZAC biscuits from WW II with significant personal modifications.

The ANZAC biscuits, named for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps of WW II, were made of simple available ingredients that would not spoil so that they could be send to soldiers fighting around the world.  The original ingredients were: flour, rolled oats, cocoanut, sugar, sweet syrup and butter.  While this makes a very stable and dependable cookie to start with, I pop up the texture and flavor with my version.  Here we go!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl mix together:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats (I use Bob’s Red Mill Thick Rolled Oats)
1 cup coconut (Baker’s Sweetened is the best)
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt (coarse grains give you little bursts of saltiness)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
8 dried figs chopped into about 8 pieces inch
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts

Putting the dry ingredients all together.  All you need is a spoon...no mixer!

Put a stick of butter and 1/4 cup corn syrup in a container and heat until melted (I do one minute in the microwave).

Heat a tablespoon of water to near boiling, then add 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda all at once and immediately stir into the butter-syrup mixture.

Stir the butter-syrup-soda water into the dry ingredients until totally mixed.  At this time add a teaspoon of vanilla.

Scoop tablespoon sized cookies onto the cookie sheets.  About a dozen to each cookie sheet, or 24 in all.  Bake the sheets separately for about twelve minutes each,  let them cool in the pan to finish cooking.

I cut the parchment sheets in half after baking and store then in a Tupperware container.

Since they have so many ingredients we enjoy in the morning, they are our staple breakfast and coffee cookies.  Try the and enjoy!