Nerves and Down Under Cookies - Mucked Up

I love being in the kitchen. I love cooking. I find it so hard to let go and not be in the kitchen when there is cooking to be done. So hard that I made dinner, of sorts, for Poppy and Stephen twelve hours after Tilly was born. Sure, it was just a bowl of pasta with some tomato sauce I had made in a hormonally charged fit of nesting a couple of days before but I still couldn't just sit back and let Stephen do it.

I love it when someone else cooks. It doesn't happen very often. And, even then, I feel awkward and anxious when there is nothing to help with in the kitchen. I have certainly never sat on our window seat and watched someone else cook.

So, I worry what will happen over the next month as I try to stay clear of the galley and let the very capable chef, who cooks for my husband all the time, cook for me and the girls. Will I be beside myself with nervousness or will I relax and enjoy it for the break it is?

I have lots of things planned for here while I am away. I have a few food posts squirrelled away and a favourite stuff page and other things I read page in the works. I am also going to try to read Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection more than two pages at a time.

And, maybe I'll have some amazing food experiences to share, who knows.

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In the meantime, I have done it. I have mucked about with the much revered ANZAC cookie recipe. I will no longer refer to it as an ANZAC cookie in its mucked up form, because it quite clearly isn't. There may even be a law in Australia and New Zealand about mucking about with it. So, from now on, it will just be a recipe for Darn Good Oatmeal Coconut Cookies With Anything I Choose to Throw in.

The first, and so far only go, I had involves walnuts and raisins. They are just as good but a little nuttier and I love the taste of just starting to caramelize raisins. Very, very nice on a rainy afternoon with a hot cup of tea.

I used a little less coconut than I did in the original and I found that they needed a couple minutes longer in the oven than the plain ones but that may just be due to my thermometerless gas oven.

Darn Good Oatmeal Cookies With Walnuts and Raisins

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats (I used old fashioned)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened coconut 

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

125 grams (1/2 cup) butter

3 tablespoons golden syrup

2 tablespoons water 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350º.

Mix flour, oats, sugar, coconut, raisins and walnuts in a large bowl.

In a saucepan, bring butter, golden syrup and water to the boil. Add the baking soda and   then mix into the dry ingredients.

Roll into walnut sized balls and place on parchment lined baking sheets. Flatten the balls with the back of a spatula.

Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Down Under Cookies - unmucked

In a slight flap the other morning, I realized two things. The first was that the internet is a pain in the ass when you are in a rush to find a recipe and that I have no family cookbooks. The latter necessitated the search of the former. We were busy, it was the morning, I had no idea how many moms and babes were due to arrive shortly and I said I was going to have some snacks.

I wanted to make muffins but could I find the notebook where I have all of those recipes? Not likely with baby in one arm and stirring porridge with the other hand. Turns out it was buried somewhere between some water paints and the crayon tin, stuck to a Rosie Flo colouring book with some Hello Kitty stickers. 

I went to the bookshelf looking for inspiration there. Turns out that Thomas, Charlie and Gordon don’t have recipes for Everything but the Kitchen Sink Muffins. I turned to the computer in the hopes that someone else out there employed my method of packing as much veg into a muffin as its little paper case will hold. Nope, not so, it seems. In less of a flap, I may have been able to think of googling something other than Everything but the Kitchen Sink in a tasty cake but I had two hungry girls and hadn’t had a cup of tea.

Somehow in the mayhem, I stumbled upon an ANZAC cookie recipe and bliss, just what was needed.

I have only made ANZAC cookies once or twice but, as one of the moms pointed out, we were only a few days from ANZAC Day. How timely. It is also pretty hard to pack them full of grated zucchini and carrots but they taste so darn yummy, who cares? I resisted the urge to muck about with the recipe on such short notice despite the walnuts and apricots that were crying out to be chopped up and chucked in, the raisins that were sulking in the cupboard, left behind and the leftover Easter eggs that were screaming out to lend some chocolatey richness. Cover your ears all you Aussies and Kiwis right now because I am going to muck about with the recipe, just as soon as I have twenty  minutes to think about it. 

I had to chase my daughter who, out of the corner of my eye, I saw snitch the butter off the counter and hightail it into a corner of the living room. Her panicked fingers desperately trying to get it unwrapped before I found her. She, like her father, is all about the butter and left to it would happily eat it with a spoon. I caught her, and tied her up with a skipping rope calmy suggested she should find something more constructive to do so I could get the bloody cookies made.

I made the cookies again a day later, still without mucking about, after some further online looking around. It turns out that the ratio of flour to oats to sugar to golden syrup to butter doesn’t really vary. The only thing that seems to change is whether you use white sugar or brown and how much coconut you use.There are thousands of recipes out there and my search was by no means exhaustive and I wanted to be sure. I turned to Lynda, who makes some darn tasty ANZAC cookies at our local cookie, coffee, general yumminess cafe, to see whether she does anything crazy different because her ANZACs are perfect and as big as Poppy’s head. It turns out that she uses pretty much spot on what I used, but a little more water and a little less coconut. Her cookies are neater and I expect that comes from the extra tablespoon of water. Or, maybe it is from not having to fight a spoon-wielding Poppy off the baking sheet of raw cookies. Until I make these some more, I won’t be able to tell for sure.

The recipe I used came from here. I added an extra tablespoon of golden syrup and an extra half cup of coconut both times I made them. I also flattened the cookies out a bit before baking. I will add an extra tablespoon of water next time. And, sorry purists, I will probably add some other stuff, just to try it out. But first, I need to get some more golden syrup.

ANZAC Cookies (2 dozen)

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats (I used old fashioned)

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup unsweetened coconut 

125 grams (1/2 cup) butter

3 tablespoons golden syrup

1 tablespoon water (I am going to make this 2 tablespoons next time)

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350º.

Mix flour, oats, sugar and coconut in a large bowl.

In a saucepan, bring butter, golden syrup and water to the boil. Add the baking soda and   then mix into the dry ingredients.

Roll into walnut sized balls and place on parchment lined baking sheets. Flatten the balls with the back of a spatula.

Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Try to have some left the next day.