Easy Baking

Easy Bake Set-Up Still Life
Power tools are necessary when you cannot find a single normal screwdriver in your house

Playing with my Easy Bake Oven today!

The reasons are simple: I promised Mother Humble I would blog about her oh-so-hilarious gift and I am running low on essential baking ingredients. I'm nearly over the whole spider-episode I spoke of yesterday, so hopefully I'll be out of the house and restocking the Humble Household with necessary ingredients soon.

So today we're tackling my childhood dream of Easy Bake layer cakes. Equipped with cake mix, oven, light-bulb and power-tools we're making the twice branded Easy Bake Betty Crocker Party Cake. Complete with party-inducing sprinkles in the batter.

Let's start with the prep...

Yea, that's parchment

What?! The parchment cake rounds for easy bake pans shouldn't surprise you. If I had tiny insulated baking strips I would use those too.

Parchment is a necessary insurance policy against light-bulb bonded cake batter and the horror of trying to frost a pile of jagged cake chunks. Parchment is what really makes baking easy.

Eight year-old's would use parchment too, they just don't know they need it yet.

Delicious Cake powder! Hungry yet?

Now we have the cake mix. Just add water! Two teaspoons to be exact. Does cake get any easier than that?

When is Nasbro going to make a Genoise mix for me?

So I add my water... and it looks like cake paste.

Lucky for me, the recipe provides some instructions"

"If the batter seems dry, add water one drop at a time until it is the consistency of cake batter."

Oh well that's no problem. Cake batter only has one consistency, right? I just add a random amount of water to the mix, until it achieves a consistency Nasbro thinks that I would think it should look like. Crystal clear.

Now I understand the "results may vary" warning on the package.

So I add some more water, about a teaspoon, and pour my batter into my pan. Now we're ready to easy bake. So I push the pan into the oven, using my burns-are-bad safety-stick and wait the prescribed 10 minutes. Then I shove my safety-stick into the slot again and push the cake into the "cooling area".


Unfortunately the trip through the easy bake contraption resulted in the top of the cake being sheared off my the same flaps that prevent me from sticking my arm into the device.

Boo! Not only does the device curtail my compulsive desire to touch dangerous things, it mangles my cake.

Maybe they need to make the opening taller? Or maybe my cake is just too fluffy and perfect? Perhaps I am just that good. I'm a easy bake master!

Maybe not.

Okay, so I messed up the frosting. How does one mess up a just-add-water frosting?

You add too much water.

Apparently Ms. Humble cannot read. Something you may believe, given the rather slapdash proof-reading work I do on the blog. Still, I could have sworn the "recipe" called for 1 1/2 teaspoons per package, but apparently it is just a 1/2 teaspoon. Whoops.

So I resuscitate my over-hydrated frosting dust with some powdered sugar and whipped it into something I could slather my cakes with.



This was a tough cake to frost. So delicate I really couldn't do a proper crumb coat or frosting application. So I just gently daubed on the frosting. It suppose it looks respectable enough, given the tools I'm working with.



Speaking of tools... am I supposed to cut with this? This bizarre Lilliputian, blade-less knife? Forget about it. Someone get me my Global!


Though I'm all for the mini cake server. I need this.



So how does it taste?

This is not a great cake. Ms. Humble's inner child is a little disappointed.

Something about the cake's texture is off. It seems spongy. However the real problem is the taste and aroma. The cake has this odd, lingering flavor. Like a combination of powdered gelatin and the water leftover from poaching eggs.

Pass. Maybe the cookie mixes are better?

Or maybe I should stick to baking cakes the old fashioned way.