Merry Christmas Kiwi

My husband has submitted his Christmas list and at the very top were two items that gave me pause.

ANZAC biscuits and Louise cake.

Since I grew up in the northern hemisphere, I had no idea what either of these baked goods were and after my aesthetically dismal but tasty experience with Pavlova, I was a bit concerned about my ability to fulfill his wishes.

The first obstacles were the measurements. What the heck does 90 grams of butter look like? Well, according to a handy online converter, it's 18.9 teaspoons, 0.40 cups or 6.3 tablespoons. For someone like me who is slightly anal retentive, these numbers made my head explode.

I am a pretty good cook and I usually bake well but not because I'm an intuitive savant in the kitchen. I CAN READ. I follow directions. I am precise in the measurements and I follow the recipe to the letter. If it calls for folding, I fold. I level the flour in the measuring cup. I set the timer. I have NOTHING in common with those who reach in, pat the top of a cake and know it needs another few minutes. I am the type that goes through an entire can of Crisco trying to make the perfect pie crust.

I have cried over pie crust.

To make matters worse, I come from a family of women who are culinary goddesses.

Effortlessly.

They are able to cook AND carry on a conversation. They own aprons. They also sew, make elaborate scrapbooks for their kids, style their hair in the mornings AND work outside of the home. I am not even close to being in their league.

But I digress.

I was able to overcome my OCD tendencies in regard to the metric measurements only to be waylaid by the damn ingredients. Unsweetened dessicated coconut? Golden syrup? I contemplated just using regular fancy coconut and honey or corn syrup but these goodies were on Dallas's Christmas list as in "Baby, seriously. All I want for Christmas is ANZAC biscuits and Louise cake", which kind of makes it hard to skimp on pesky details like a FLAVOUR PROFILE he's known and loved for forty years.

I went online in search of recipes. We called his Grammie Rhodie in Papatoetoe. There was no getting around it. The signature taste of the cookies was reliant upon a single ingredient.

In blog after blog, I was told that the crunchy yet chewy goodness could only be achieved with Lyle's. Yeah, so twenty plus bucks later, I had ordered six bottles of the stuff which was probably overkill considering the recipe only calls for two tablespoons. I plan on using golden syrup in pecan pie, in my butter tarts and every other place I had once used corn syrup because OH MY FREAKING TASTEBUDS, this stuff is liquid gold.

And the cookies are all kinds of buttery, caramely, lick-your-fingers fabulous. Dallas has been having them for a snack with his morning tea and since they have a cup of oatmeal in them, this is probably acceptable somewhere.