When I moved into my new home last year, one of my biggest disappointments was that the oven didn't work. As a rule, I do a lot of oven cooking-bread, cakes, cookies, roasted meats. Yes, yes, I know-that's one of the reasons my waistline is disappearing.
Or maybe it isn't. After a year of purchasing most of my baked goods, I have concluded that the foods I can afford to buy ready made are long on sugar and refined carbohydrates and very short on nutrition. My daughter and her family visited for Thanksgiving in 2007 (that's when we discovered the oven didn't work!), and I had purchased a broiler oven.
The broiler oven works pretty well for roasts, vegetables, and other moist preparations. By using foil baking dishes that will squish around to mold to the shape of the oven, I can prepare a variety of dishes at the same time-chicken, rice and a vegetable dish for example. However, it doesn't deliver the right kind of heat in the right place for cakes and the like.
After some deliberation, I decided that it would be less expensive in the short-term to purchase a toaster/convection oven. Even though the budget is limited this month (when isn't it?), I invested in a mid-line Black & Decker Toaster oven-on sale for $38.00 at Walmart. No, that's not a Black Friday price-I will be staying OUT of the stores on Friday. Madness and mayhem in the name of bargain hunting is not my favorite.
Once I had determined where I would be able to plug it in and where I would be able to store it between uses to protect it from my cats (they seem to think everything, including small appliances, belong on the floor), I was ready to try it out. I decided oatmeal cookies would be a good way to test the oven's performance. I had purchased oatmeal, black walnuts and cranraisins the day before in preparation for the holidays.
I had sort of been counting on the oatmeal box having a recipe, but since I had purchased generic, it only had cooking directions for breakfast oatmeal. Being too lazy to get out a cookbook, I decided to work from memory. Here is my recipe:
Oat Meal Cookies - Ingredients:
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 or one stick of butter or margarine (I prefer butter: better cholesterol than cancer)
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon rum (or vanilla, or whatever flavoring strikes your fancy)
- ½ cup dry powdered milk
- ½ cup water
- 2 or more cups of oatmeal
- 1 cup (more or less) of flour
- Nuts or dried fruit for extra flavor
Method:
Put the sugar and butter into a large mixing bowl. It is helpful to have let the butter set out and soften a bit before starting this project, but not essential. Using the back of a large spoon, cream the mixture together. For those of you who are not familiar with cooking terms, that means mix the butter and sugar-but because of the nature of butter and they don't exactly stir, so you use the back of the spoon to press the lumps out of the butter and press the sugar in. The resultant mixture should look something like bread crumbs. Add the two eggs, stir. Follow that up with the powdered milk, flavoring, and baking powder. Add water. Stir in as much oatmeal as you can possibly manage. Since oatmeal doesn't absorb moisture as well as flour, there will still be room for some flour. It might not take a whole cup-this part is kind of a judgment call. You want a good stiff dough, but not one stiff enough to be rolled out for cutters. Finally, add nuts and/or dried fruit. For this particular batch, I made half of them with just walnuts (the black American kind), and added cranraisins to the second batch. I love cranberries; my roommate hates them. Adding different “goodies” is one of the wonderful ways home cooking can be customized.
Preheat the toaster oven to 350 degrees Farenheit . Point the oven settings to “bake”. This particular small oven came with its own baking tray, which holds about 6 cookies-about a teaspoon of dough in each. I set the timer for 10 minutes the first time; decided they weren't quite as done as I would like, and set it for 12 minutes for subsequent batches When I added the cranraisins, I realized the moisture content in the fruit slightly changes the consistency of the cookies, and I had to increase the cooking time to 15 minutes.
The oven turns off at the end of each timed sequence-a real plus for me, as this means if I get busy or absent-minded, I won't have burned cookies.
The result of my experimental recipe? Around 3 dozen yummy cookies-a little bit on the sweet side; I may cut down on the sugar next time. The walnut ones have a delicate crispness, the fruit ones are chewier. There are a number of ways to experiment with this kind of recipe: try different types of flour or cereal flakes, different flavorings or change the dried fruit and nuts a bit. Since I can no longer drink whole milk, the powdered milk adds calcium to my diet, and oatmeal, nuts and raisins need no excuse. The sugar? Well…like I said, just a little on the sweet side. A substitute would have to be used for diabetic cooking, and cutting back would probably be a good idea. It will change the consistency of the cookies slightly-may need more egg.
Over-all, I'm delighted with my little oven's ability to bake cookies. It's next test will be cake!
