Kerry Greenwood Cookbook

Fans of Australian author Kerry Greenwood have longed for a Corinna Chapman cookbook to accompany the Corinna Chapman baker mysteries. Now a cookbook is available for free as a PDF download. Great recipes, historical annotations, food history, and encouraging cooking tips. 26 pages.  Kerry Greenwood: mouth-watering morsels to make your man melt: Recipes from Corinna Chapman, baker and reluctant investigator. Go HERE and click on the cover of the Cookbook to download.

From the Cookbook:
CHEAT’S BISCUITS, which really ought to be called SENSIBLE PRECAUTION COOKIES

As soon as the women of the world accepted, indeed, embraced, the refrigerator, they realized that they could cut their baking time in half and restore some valuable reading time by storing dough in the fridge. Now we have freezers it is even more sensible to double the amount and stash the rest, even if your children accuse you of serving pterodactyl soup or roast mammoth (certainly, when cooking with megafauna you would have had leftovers).

2/3 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon, or 3 drops, vanilla essence (Or any other essence—for lemon biscuits use 3 drops lemon essence, or 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and top with candied peel. The same for orange.)
1/2 cup chopped nuts (or chocolate bits, or sultanas, or any other favourite flavouring—hazelnuts are divine)
2 cups self-raising flour

Cream butter and sugar together, add the egg and the vanilla, mix well, add the nuts, mix again, then add the flour and turn the mixture onto a tray. Knead it and shape it into a roll about the thickness of an actual sausage.
Wrap the sausage of dough in greaseproof paper or cling wrap (I like cling wrap) and put it into the fridge. You can freeze it until you next defrost, when it will be a nice surprise. Or it will keep in the fridge for weeks.
When you want biscuits, cut slices from the roll and cook them in a moderate oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Press sweeties or coconut or chocolate bits or sprinkles or hundreds and thousands onto
the top. Or dent the middle and put in a teaspoonful of jam or marmalade.

***

Kerry Greenwood was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and after wandering far and wide, she returned to live there. She has a degree in English and Law from Melbourne University and was admitted to the legal profession on the 1st April 1982, a day which she finds both soothing and significant.

Kerry has written twenty novels, a number of plays, including The Troubadours with Stephen D'Arcy, is an award-winning children's writer and has edited and contributed to several anthologies. In 1996 she published a book of essays on female murderers called Things She Loves: Why women Kill.

The Phryne Fisher series (pronounced Fry-knee, to rhyme with briny) began in 1989 with Cocaine Blues which was a great success. Kerry has written eighteen books in this series with no sign yet of Miss Fisher hanging up her pearl-handled pistol. Kerry says that as long as people want to read them, she can keep writing them. In 2012, Phryne will be sashaying across our television screens in a series to be screened on ABC TV.

Kerry Greenwood has worked as a folk singer, factory hand, director, producer, translator, costume-maker, cook and is currently a solicitor. When she is not writing, she works as a locum solicitor for the Victorian Legal Aid. She is also the unpaid curator of seven thousand books, three cats (Attila, Belladonna and Ashe) and a computer called Apple (which squeaks). She embroiders very well but cannot knit. She has flown planes and leapt out of them (with a parachute) in an attempt to cure her fear of heights (she is now terrified of jumping out of planes but can climb ladders without fear). She can detect second-hand bookshops from blocks away and is often found within them.

For fun Kerry reads science fiction/fantasy and detective stories. She is not married, has no children and lives with a registered wizard. When she is not doing any of the above she stares blankly out of the window.

Hap Tip to Fan, Entrepreneur and Pastry Chef Luna Raven for alerting me to this cookbook.