The Best Anzac Biscuits Recipe (Chewy Or Crunchy) (2024)

FAQs

Should Anzac biscuits be crunchy or chewy? ›

Traditionally the biscuit was known to be crunchy. According to the Australian War Memorial, soldiers used to grind them up and use them to make porridge.

If this recipe ends up really hard, then you may have overbaked them. They shouldn't be too hard because the ingredients won't allow it. But if they do, pop them in an airtight container with a slice of bread and leave them for 24 hours. They'll be fine after that.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside. We default to our Land O Lakes® Salted Butter when baking biscuits.

Don't let the mixture stand around.

So, make sure you roll and bake the mixture as soon as possible after mixing to make rolling and flattening of the biscuits easy. If it does get a little dry you can just mix in another tablespoon or two of water to help make it a little more pliable before shaping.

chewy vs crispy is a combination of 2 things… ratio of fats to flour, and baking times/temps.. for more chewy cake like cookies, you want something with a high fat, content cooked at a lower longer temperature… for a more crispy or dryer cooking you want a lower fat batter cooked at a high temperature.

To prepare crunchy biscuits, reduce the amount of ingredients that tend to retain moisture, such as 00 type flour, eggs or brown sugar. Prefer white granulated sugar or corn syrup instead, for drier biscuits.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

But watch for crumbling or "melting": "If your biscuits are falling apart, then you have added too much of the wet ingredients, or potentially too much sugar," Quinn says. The marine biologist-turned-cook advises leaving the biscuits on the baking tray as they cool, then giving them a day or two to "chewify".

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.

Should you chill biscuit dough before baking? ›

But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

As it turns out, adding hard-boiled egg yolks to your biscuit dough is a way to ward off an overworked, tough dough that can be the downfall of a butter-based pastry. When the trick is employed, the pastry shatters and then dissolves in your mouth quickly, tasting like a knob of flaky butter.

Best substitute for golden syrup is a combination of light molasses or treacle, plus honey. I use 1 part molasses or treacle, and 3 parts honey – the flavour is nearly identical, and the colour is very similar (a bit darker).

Texture - The biscuit dough has to be just right. If while mixing, you feel that the dough is too dry and crumbly and you are not able to shape it into rounds, add more liquid (this can be either in the form of a tablespoon of melted butter or just a tablespoon of boiling water).

Chewy Anzac biscuits: cooking time is the key

The good news is you don't need to tinker with the ingredients to get the texture you prefer, only the cooking time. Just as with chocolate brownies, variations in cooking time can mean the difference between a chewier or firmer Anzac biscuit.

Biscuits get their light, fluffy, mouthwatering texture from the consistency of the dough and the air pockets that are created when the butter melts during baking. Biscuit dough is moist and sticky, so much so that it may seem too wet after you've added all your flour.

Texture - The biscuit dough has to be just right. If while mixing, you feel that the dough is too dry and crumbly and you are not able to shape it into rounds, add more liquid (this can be either in the form of a tablespoon of melted butter or just a tablespoon of boiling water).

Unlike bread and cakes, which tend to become hard the longer they spend in the air, most biscuits go soft over time. As in bread, starch from the flour in biscuits begins to crystalize after a few days, theoretically making biscuits more brittle.

Kneading too much and overhandling biscuit, shortcake and scone dough overdevelops the gluten in the flour, resulting in a chewy, tough baked product.