Saturday, April 13, 2013

Australian life - the CWA and packet mix cakes!

The Country Women's Association is Australia's largest and oldest women's organisation. Back in 2006 (New England, Australia - CWA) I wrote a little of its NSW history.

The CWA  and its members have always been famous for their cooking. I grew up in a world where they normally catered, where country cakes and scones were famous.

In 2010, the candidates on Masterchef were set the challenge of cooking a set of recipes from the CWA cook book to be judged by 100 CWA ladies. As you will see from my story at the time, Masterchef meets the CWA, they bombed big time.

Now given all this, I feel that an era has ended. According to a story by David Chen, the Queensland Branch of the CWA has decided to allow cakes made from packet mixes into baking competitions! I quote from David's story:

"While acknowledging it is a far cry from the tradition of making cakes from scratch, CWA spokeswoman Alison Taylor says it will make the competition more accessible.

"But there is a talent to making packet cakes, it's not as easy as sounds," she said."

I know that's right, I know that the CWA must move with the times, but packet mixes?!

4 comments:

Evan said...

I was surprised. Though all the arguments for the change probably make good sense there is still a part of me going 'but that's not right'.

Anonymous said...

It's what Adam Scott's mum used, to feed her boy up good. So that's good enuf for me :)

kvd

Anonymous said...

The horror!


Sue

Jim Belshaw said...

Evan, you and Sue capture my reactions! kvd, how could you!