Yes, Afghans. New Zealand’s favourite, casually racist biscuits. I loved these biscuits as a kid and it never occurred to me that there was something inappropriate about their name until I made them for someone who had not grown up with a well-thumbed copy of Edmonds Cookery Book on their kitchen bookshelf.
We can perhaps excuse their name if we consider them as a product of their time. Edmonds Cookery Book was first published in 1908 and the recipe for Afghans is thought to have been in there at least since the 1940s. In a post called ‘Decolonising the Chocolate Biscuit’, one NZ food blogger (no name to be found) suggests that the problem is not with those who named the biscuit, but with the connotations it carries today. She/he suggests decolonising the biscuit by renaming it ‘Decolonisation Walnut Surprise’, among other suggestions.
Well, please forgive me for keeping the original name. They are something of an institution in New Zealand and it would feel sacrilegious to call them anything else. I realise this is a terrible excuse, but I do have several better ones if this won’t do. 1. It is not just a chocolate biscuit and I want New Zealanders to be able to find the recipe if they are looking for it and 2. I like to be true to my sources.
The source, as I said, is Edmonds Cookery Book, New Zealand’s best selling book by far. My Dad is a New Zealander and we have had a splattered and stained copy on our shelf for as long as I can remember. The cakes and biscuits section is the only part we’ve ever used, which makes sense given it started out as a promotional book for Edmond’s baking powder. The rest is full of kitsch '70s recipes, like pork roasts with glace cherries and grated cheese and pineapple salad, yuk!
Below I share the original recipe. Here are a few tips that I’ve learnt in my many years of baking them:
- Either refrigerate the dough before cooking or bake in a moulded biscuit tray or they tend to melt into big flat biscuits that all run together
- Mix in the cornflakes gently so they don’t get too crushed
- Betty Crocker milk chocolate icing is a great cheat
- If you refrigerate them the butter solidifies and they taste more like a brownie than a chocolate biscuit – if you prefer to keep them crisp them leave them out
Makes approximately 12 biscuits. In the words of the PC NZ blogger: “Serve with a nice cup of tea and some lively debate.”
Biscuits
Ingredients
200g butter, softened
½ cup sugar
1 ¼ cups plain flour
¼ cup cocoa
2 cups cornflakes
Chocolate icing (see below)
Walnut halves, for decoration
Method
Preheat oven at 180C. Grease a biscuit tray.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Sift flour and cocoa over butter mixture. Stir into butter mixture. Gently fold in cornflakes.
Spoon mounds of mixture onto the greased oven tray, gently pressing together. Bake at 180C for 15 minutes. Leave to cool and firm up.
When cool, ice with chocolate icing and decorate with a walnut piece.
Chocolate icing
Ingredients
100g butter
100g icing sugar, or to taste
100g dark chocolate (80%)
Method
Beat the butter until soft. Sift in the icing sugar and whisk until combined.
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over boiling water, stirring constantly. Let it cool a little then pour into the bowl with the butter mixture and whisk till combined.
