Oct 28

Cookbook 16: The New PWMU Cookbook

Ah the PWMU Cookbook revised by Lorna Connor, I can imagine that many Uniting Church families have one of these tucked away somewhere, of one of the many different editions.  Mine is the third (revised) edition, and I think we’re now up to the fifth edition.  The one thing about this book is that you can buy the current version, but these recipes are unlikely to appear in it.  Each revision looks at what is being made today, and what ingredients aren’t too expensive.  My mother’s second edition PWMU Cookbook has a recipe in it called “Economical biscuits” because they don’t use eggs – which must have been expensive at the time.

I was so excited when I bought this cook book because I had used my mother’s to make all sorts of biscuits and cakes when I lived at home.  I was disappointed to find that some of my favourite biscuits were not longer in my version, so I wrote them out when I visited home so I could still make them.

As I only ever use this cookbook for baking biscuits and cakes, I haven’t investigated any of the many other categories of recipe in it for this post.  Instead I made a cake and two different biscuits.  I’m going to write out these recipes as I actually cooked them, because the one thing that this book doesn’t have is recipe testing (not the Women’s Weekly kitchen that’s for sure), and some of the recipes assume more than basic cooking knowledge (for example, what is a quick oven?).  I also am going to provide the recipe for one of my most favourite not recipes of this book.  Yes, it’s based on the recipe in the book, but I substituted all the fruit for chocolate – because… chocolate.Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup of vegetable oil
  • 3 eggs, beaten well
  • 2 cups of self raising flour
  • 1 cup raw sugar
  • 2 cups grated carrot
  • 1 teaspoon mixed spice
  • 1 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup sultanas
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1/2 cup coconut

Method:

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C.  Grease and line an 18cm x 11cm loaf pan
  2. Combine flour, sugar, carrot, spices, sultanas, walnuts and coconut.
  3. In a separate dish mix together the eggs and vegetable oil until smooth
  4. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and beat well.
  5. Pour mixture into prepared loaf pan and bake for 90 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.

Notes on this recipe:

  • Oops, I forgot the coconut
  • It still tastes good

Cheese Straws

Ingredients:

  • 90g plain flour
  • 60g butter
  • 60g grated tasty cheese
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • pinch of cayenne powder
  • pinch of salt

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C.  Prepare a biscuit slide/tray of some description
  2. Sift flour, salt and cayenne into a bowl.
  3. Rub the butter into the flour mixture.
  4. Add cheese and mix in the egg yolk and lemon juice.
  5. Roll out thinly and cut into thin strips
  6. Place on tray and bake for 6 minutes

Notes on this recipe:

  • You’re basically making a short crust pastry with cheese and a tiny amount of spice in it and then baking it.  This is great as long as you don’t eat it all at once – which will be hard because they are addictive.
  • The dough will also probably want to stick to everything, your bench, your rolling pin, etc.  Use lots of flour to keep things from sticking, with the butter and cheese melting in the oven, it won’t matter too much.

Chocolate rock cakes

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 2 cups of self raising flour
  • 1 1/2 cups of chocolate pieces (I use plain milk Cadbury chocolate)
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoons all spice
  • 1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup milk

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C.  Prepare a biscuit slide/tray of some description
  2. Beat butter and sugar to a cream.  Add the egg and beat well.
  3. Sift in the flour and spice and add chocolate.  Add as much of the milk as necessary to form a very stiff dough.
  4. Put lumps of the dough on a tray.
  5. Bake for 15 minutes and cool on a wire tray as soon as the baking tray is cool enough to handle.

Notes on this recipe:

  • This is one of my special recipes, please be responsible and use it only for good and not evil.
  • It is divine, but I am one of those people who thinks that cinnamon and chocolate go together.
  • Mmmmmmmmm nom