When I was growing up, my mum was a fairly prodigious biscuit maker. Anzac biscuits were cooked on a high rotation and so I didn’t really connect the uniquely Australian golden-syrup-and-oat biscuit with any particular time of year or with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. I'm not sure if I was particularly oblivious as a child or it had something to do with my excessive intake of golden syrup. Australia is the only place that I can think of that has a type of food that also is meant to serve as a war memorial.

Given that I was served Anzac biscuits throughout the year, I was surprised that the cooking of Anzac biscuits for most other people is completely seasonal. Google Trends, the publicly available tool that allows you to search for trends amongst the flood of searches in Google, points out that Anzac biscuit recipes are only sought out once every year by the Australian populace.

As a proportion of searches, more people in the ACT search for an Anzac biscuit recipe than the other states and territories. More people are searching for the recipe (and recipes as an entire category) over time. Are the biscuits becoming more popular? Or are more people relying on internet searches to find recipes?

As for the association of Anzac biscuits with the Army Corps, The Department of Veteran Affairs is a little more unequivocal: uses of the word “Anzac” requires permission from the Minister for Veteran Affairs but their policy on the acceptable use for biscuits is as follows:

It should be noted that approvals for the word 'Anzac' to be used on biscuit products have been given provided that the product generally conforms to the traditional recipe and shape, is not advertised in any way that would play on Australia's military heritage, and is not used in association with the word 'cookies', with its non-Australian overtones. For instance, an application for Anzac biscuits dipped in chocolate would not be approved as they would not conform with the traditional recipe.

This hideous abomination that includes cranberry and white chocolate is not allowed. So what counts as a traditional recipe? If my biscuits are mishapen is that in any way untraditional?

In her exhaustive research on the Anzac biscuit, Sian Supski uncovers traditional recipes for the biscuit starting in the 1920s, in the "contributory cookery books" where women supplied their well-honed or prize-winning recipes. While the biscuit is based on Scottish oatcakes, the Australian adaptation that includes golden syrup started in 1925. She quotes a curator from the National Museum of Australia, Kirsten Wehner:

A 1925 recipe for an ‘Anzac Crisp’ appears to be the earliest published recipe for what can now be recognised as an Anzac biscuit, and was published in the South Australian Green and Gold Cookery Book, second edition. The third edition of the Green and Gold Cookery Book also has the recipe for Anzac Crisps, donated by Miss K Shannon, but additionally has recipes for ‘Rolled Oats Biscuits’ and ‘Soldiers’ Biscuits’ which are all very similar to the Anzac biscuit recipe. Another South Australian cookbook The Barossa Cookery Book, 1000 Tried Recipes also has a recipe from the early 1920s, donated by A Heidenreich ... By the late 1920s and early 1930s the recipe appears to be entrenched in cookery books and magazines.

The earliest recipe is as follows:

Anzac Crisps
two cupsful rolled oats
one-half cupful sugar
one cupful flour
one teaspoonful cream tartar
one-half teaspoonful of soda
one-half cupful melted butter
one tablespoonful golden syrup
four tablespoonsful boiling water

Dissolve soda in water. Mix dry ingredients, then add syrup, then water and soda.
Miss K Shannon, Encounter Bay
Green & Gold Cookery Book (1927)

I’d recommend baking at 150-160c for 15-20 minutes.