Anzac fail cookies

Well I’ve finished my 52 Blessings challenge from last year but I’ve kind of gotten used to blogging on a Sunday, or at least having a regular weekly reason to blog. I was thinking of continuing on with the 52 Blessings thing but the well was running pretty dry by Week 52. Against my better judgement, I decided to join a Phoney 365 challenge that Leigh is doing – if for no other reason than to prove that it can be done.  I’m not entirely sure how confident I am of that statement….the last 365 photo challenge I did, I lasted around a month and a half at the most.

So in case I pike on the Phoney 365, I decided to set myself another weekly challenge for the year. I touched on my concept of fail cooking last year when I had a go at making some double chocolate chip cookies. I was so inspired by such comments as “kangaroo poop” and being able “to see ugly faces in them”, I’ve decided to make fail cooking a regular feature.

Here’s my latest effort – Anzac fail cookies! At first you might be thinking, well they don’t look anywhere near as horrid as the last lot but I have gotten a little deceptive in my photography. The aerial shot exists purely to make them look like flat, tiny cookies. The actual fact is that they are more like little balls of cookie with a flat base on them. How they managed to be crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside while retaining the shape of a macaroon is completely beyond me.

But if you want to know what makes these cookies extra fail worthy, I’ll share a few trade secrets:

1. Use the oldest coconut you have, it’s even better if you can’t recall ever buying any. Mystery coconut adds something special.
2. Don’t bother measuring the golden syrup, just have a rough guess. If it makes the mixture a little gooey, just add more mystery coconut.
3. Again with the bi-carb of soda, have a guess. It’s extra entertaining when you add too much to the hot melted butter and syrup and it foams up like something from chemistry class. Of course that means you have to get more syrup and butter but hey, what’s the point of cooking if you can’t have a little fun doing it?
4. A lot of people will tell you that you have to make sure your flour is “fresh” or that you should at least have a rough idea what decade you bought it in. The best part about fail cooking is that details like that really don’t matter. You’re still going for the right flavour but if the texture and appearance goes to putty, then so much the better.
5. If you’ve run out of rolled oats in the pantry, don’t despair. You know those little sachets of flavoured minute oats you can get to make porridge at work during your tea break? Those are fantastic backups. Although I would try to stick to flavours that complement each other – like honey buzz and vanilla. Strawberry and apple flavoured probably aren’t that good a mix to use in an Anzac cookie recipe.

Anzac fail cookies, just as yummy as the real thing but twice as borked!