WWII Ration Recipe - Peach Surprise Dumplings

Peach Surprise Dumplings

Today I was excited to finally delve more into my ration cookbook Cooking on a Ration. A while ago, I posted about all the recipes I wanted to try from this neat little book, but haven't tried any of them until today!

Peach Surprise Dumplings is the one that caught my eye. The recipe is very basic, and to me, is such a classic example of ration cooking cleverness. It uses pie crust, canned peaches, and a spoonful of orange marmalade for the surprise! Then for the sauce, it uses the syrup from the peaches, a bit of sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and butter. Simple, frugal, and time-savvy. Oh. And they taste divine!

Peach Surprise Dumplings from Cooking on a Ration by Marjorie Mills
I love her mantra that "Food Is Still Fun!"

The only change I made was to cook the dumplings in glass dishes because I didn't have English muffin rings like the recipe called for. (Who does??) The glass dishes worked great, though. Oh, and I used sliced peaches since I didn't have peach halves.

The recipe used nearly all the peaches in a large can (24 or 32 oz.?) and used all of the peach juice I got from draining the peaches for 10 minutes prior.

My four glass individual portion size dishes set on a shallow pan

Peaches inside the pie crust with a dollop of orange marmalade!

Close up the pastry over the peaches

I have to say that this recipe was awesome!! It was so simple, and yet it had a huge wow factor in looks and taste. The orange marmalade added a lovely citrusy floral note, and the peach sauce added some needed tartness. In all, this recipe was absolutely brilliant.

Plus, it was just fancy without a whole lot of effort, which in my book, is amazing. My whole family loved it. We ate it with dollops of vanilla ice cream along with the zingy sauce, and it was just perfect. I can't recommend this recipe highly enough!

Do yourself a favor and try this one. And if you serve it to guests, trust me. They will love you for it!
(I would recommend letting them cool 15-20 minutes before serving though. We ate ours straight out of the oven and there was a lot of huffing and puffing just to take one bite! It helped us savor it a bit, I suppose. haha!)