Secret Women’s Biscuits & The Great CWA Swindle.

Spontaneous snacks which don’t immediately trigger obesity and diabetes can be tricky to find, and occasionally this means a muesli bar appears in our household. Except that their fragile health claims are further threatened by three undercoats of chocolate and a lacquer of “yoghurt”. Olivia and I shared a muesli bar recently, which I think was from the lesser known 1998 vintage, and it made me wonder why on earth one was in the house, and specifically, in my mouth.

More importantly, why had we paid for a bastardised version of oats, one of the cheapest digestive materials known to man?  And why was I eating something expensive which tasted like the contents of a chaff bag?  My guilt steered me towards The Good Book. The Book which can right all modern wrongs. The Book  which can drag kids from the couch, turn the telly off, eradicate divorce, eliminate the scourge of depression, and most importantly, solve the obesity crisis through gargantuan doses of  butter and sugar. The Country Women’s Association Cook Book.

Despite my penchant for an apron, I am neither a woman, nor currently residing in the country. This does not preclude me from owning The Book, or attempting its recipes, but it does mean I’m not in possession of the secret code required to make most of these recipes work. My first hurdle came in attempting a chocolate cake for our school cake stall. Only as I was loading the cake into the oven, did I twig that my default “fan forced” setting was unlikely to be the same setting deployed at the formulation of this recipe - which was no doubt penned closer to European settlement than to the Sydney Olympics. However, ingenuity, an Alpine Strawberry garnish straight from the garden, and a render of icing allowed me to resurrect my cake (see Exhibit A, above) and it was amongst the first and most valuable sold on election day. KPIs achieved.

Which is why it’s all the more surprising I didn’t pay attention when attempting some seemingly very simple biscuits to counteract the satanic indulgence of the muesli bar. Or perhaps I was fooled by the fact the recipe was only four lines long and contained only six ingredients. O ye of too much faith. Here is the recipe lifted verbatim from The Good Book -  it’s to be found  just after Jellied Vegetable Salad and Puftaloons, but before Pineapple Fruit Melange and Candied Plums:

Rolled Oat Biscuits

Put 200g (2 cups) rolled oats in a bowl with 230g (1 cup) soft brown sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder and a pinch of salt. Melt 125g butter and mix in. Lastly, add 1 beaten egg. Stir well until thoroughly combined. Put teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking tray. Bake in a 180°C oven for 15-20 minutes.

Sounds simple, but I challenge anyone, anywhere, to make it work. First, I forgot the fan-forced issue and torched the pioneering batch. The outer rims of the biscuits fused permanently to the baking tray and are now part of a scrap-metal consignment destined for China where they will become a car or a hospital.

On the second attempt, I chose to ignore The Book’s suggestion of teaspoon sized servings, nor did it specify the required spacing between deposits, and the entire thing amalgamated into a solitary tarmac of biscuit. (The piles in the picture below were too close together and merged into one unhappy family.)

On the third attempt, my junior assistants added the butter before the egg, so its binding role went tits up. The sugar surged to the outer rim forming a toffee, leaving a pile of butter-toasted oats-crumble in the centre. Which tasted superb, but under no circumstances could be deemed a biscuit. If your afternoon tea blows away in a breeze, then it’s probably not right.

One of the dads at school told me the fruits of his most recent attempt at a CWA recipe were inedible; so this issue is either gender based, era specific, or geographically-centric. My Aunty makes a very high quality version of these oat biscuits. Not only is she a woman living in the country, but she’s also an active member of her local CWA (a robust gathering, some members are still actually breathing). This of course means she’s got the secret code to make these recipes work. And even though I've got two daughters and another one on the way, they have not yet reached the age of CWA recipe consent.

I’m not sure which particular recipe my Aunt uses (I’m guessing it contains flour), but the CWA version is so fraudulent I’ve completely re-written it for the modern era. My recipe produces biscuits the size of tractor wheels and fragile as spider webs, but all that oxygen and aeration merely boosts the flavour profile.  The main problem with the CWA approach is a lack of binding, but I want to honour the original version and keep the ingredients unchanged. I assume that out there, a Country Woman, somewhere, made this recipe work. Or perhaps the ink got smudged by leaking rain in the Cobb & Co saddle bag transporting the recipe to town and someone at CWA HQ just typed up the bits they could read.

Unless it's 1935 at your place, here’s the recipe that actually works. Just don’t expect to take them anywhere.

Rolled Oats Biscuits – For All Humans, Regardless of Gender & Location:

1)   Put 200g (2 cups) rolled oats in a bowl with 230g (1 cup) soft brown sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder and a pinch of salt. Break up any large lumps of sugar.

2)   Melt 125g butter and mix in with a wooden spoon.

3)   Last, mix in 1 beaten egg until mixture is thoroughly combined. Ideally, allow mixture to rest in a cool place for 20-30 minutes and then remix to combine well.

4)   Line a baking tray with greased baking paper. Deposit teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto the paper and shape into high domes.  Space each dome at least 10cm apart as the mixture will spread when cooking.

5)   Pre-heat oven to 170°C on baking setting. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

6)   Remove from oven. After 5 minutes, use a slice to gently remove the biscuits from the paper and place on a wire rack to cool.

This produces sufficient biscuits to sustain a family of eight throughout The Great Depression.