This post is both a sort of sidestory to Microwavin’ and also a precursor to Jelly July, even though I’ve only just now decided what gelatin(e) dessert I’m going to make for the latter. Anyways, for those who came to class without doing the reading, this recipe is from a 1982 microwave-focused cookbook that gets into some pretty intense theory-crafting on how to do anything and everything in the microwave. (Well, except bake the sugar cookie crust for your dessert pizza.) For my first foray, I ended up making a sort of American Chinese dish called Beef-Asparagus Oriental that honestly turned out alright as far as the microwave part goes, but also would be much easier to just stir-fry. Unless, of course, you only have a microwave.
That brings me to the second thing I made from this book, a Raspberry Jam Cake.
Yes, this is after I corrected the white balance
When I handed off the prodigious tome that is Whirlpool Micro Menus Cookbook to my mother to pick out something for me to make, she selected a few candidates, including a couple desserts. Given she had already went ahead and purchased the raspberry jam for this cake, I figured I should make it, but held off until later so I wouldn’t end up delaying the much-anticipated release of the original post.
The recipe starts out normal enough, you cream butter and sugar, add a couple eggs, alternate dry ingredients with a remaining wet ingredient, fold in nuts and jam, and voila. Or at least, that’s ironically the easy part.
First things first, I had to do some dreaded Microwave Math. Making matters worse is the cookbook assumes you have no moving turntable in your oven, so they often give you a Cook Time, and then tell you “oh, but also stop and rotate the dish several times during”. Funnily enough, the turntable in our household microwave oven has been more or less Out Of Service for a few years now, so in that sense I appreciate the advice. But it does mean More Microwave Math. (For anyone eyeing this recipe, please know this cookbook assumes you have a 700W oven.) However, I did avoid some math in the end.
It’s Not Panning Out
You see, the recipe called for a size of pan that was quite unfamiliar to me. (And remember, metal pans are disqualified.) Later, when I looked up 12 x 7.5 inch pans, I did find a good chunk of vintage ceramic baking dishes usually labeled “casserole”, so maybe this was something an average 80’s household could be expected to have on hand. For this 21st century girl, while I do have a ceramic loaf pan, and some glass rectangular dishes (you know, the kind you might roast cylindrical veggies in), I knew immediately that I didn’t really have anything that wasn’t significantly smaller than specified, and given how that would end up affecting the depth, and therefore baking, of the cake, …well you see the problem.
So, I briefly contemplated dusting off my geometry skills from grade school and calculating the volume of the various glass pie dishes I have to see if they were a match for the desired pan. Quickly, I realized I could get away with just working out the area, but before I pulled the trigger on the ol’ pi r squared I stopped and thought “I can just pour in the batter and eyeball it.” Later when I did actually do the math, I did definitely end up with a deeper..taller? cake than intended, which is the likely explanation why I had to cook it for a bit longer moreso than any failures in my earlier Microwave Math.
I do think, however, this is the true nail in the coffin for not only this recipe, but trying to bake most anything in the microwave. I mentioned things like mug cakes in my earlier post which, as you might expect, are made in a ceramic mug. But besides my glass pie dishes, I don’t think I have any non-metal cake or brownie pans… no, okay I have one (1) 8×8 glass square baking dish, which still wouldn’t be the right size. And to go back to my “this book would be helpful for someone who doesn’t have an oven”, along with “you need to be really consistent with how deep your batter is in your baking dish”, requiring a specific sized casserole dish…well I think you get where I’m going with this.
Microbakin’
It’s also just weirdly disorienting baking in the microwave. To be fair, cooking is a bit strange too – the sliced beef in my savory recipe cooked very differently than it would in a hot frying pan, but part of why I was down to try is because you have a lot of room for error when cooking red meat. At least, compared to a cake.
For those who don’t bake much, usually the issue is the top of the cake looks done (cooked through, golden brown, et cetera), but the middle of the cake? You don’t know. There’s a few tests, like poking the cake with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean, or lightly pressing on the surface of the cake to see if it springs back, to make sure you don’t end up with a raw middle. You can also, much like a roast, somewhat rely on the residual heat of the cake for a bit of extra help after you take it out of the oven to cool.
This cake however, very much cooked from the bottom-up, with little raw pools of batter on the top indicating where the cool spots were in my microwave.
Don’t worry, I did turn it to mitigate this as directed. A lot.
I think because of this, the surface also ended up considerably more pock-marked than you would get in a normal oven, although to be fair, I didn’t tap out much of the air beforehand. (And to also be fair to me, I didn’t want to potentially sink all the chopped nuts to the bottom.)
Reader, I went through the trouble of turning on the kitchen light for this freshly-baked photo
Even though my cake ended up deeper than intended, adding an extra degree of difficulty, I think anyone used to baking a cake in an oven would have to seriously recalibrate themselves when it comes to doneness.
Judgement Day.rm
As I meow the Final Fantasy VII track of the same name
I realize now I didn’t even talk about the icing, which…I wouldn’t make again. There’s nothing seriously wrong with it, but it’s not Good, and all the members of my household are fairly meh when it comes to most sugary frostings. If you’re the type to like iced brownies, then sure, but even then I would recommend against the one provided. The one pro is before I iced this slice, my dad took a look at my finished product and deemed it “ABC Cake” (aka, Already Been Chewed). After? “Wow, Kelp, you really put lipstick on a pig!” Putting aside the fact that I don’t think that’s quite the right idiomatic expression here, some sort of spread will serve to shroud the spotted surface.
The cake is…overdone. Still very edible, but as one of my taste testers said “it has a bit of a chew to it”. Making matters worse, the raspberry jam more or less completely absorbed into what is named Raspberry Jam Cake, and just doesn’t come through. A few swirls remained intact, but I think there’s two more issues with the recipe here. One – depending on the consistency of your jam, it can be hard to incorporate (but not mix!) it into the batter. Preserves might be the better option here. Two, I feel like when I’ve done these types of jam swirls successfully, instead of folding it into the batter and then pouring into the pan, you drop dollops into the batter after you’ve poured it into the pan, and use a butter knife to achieve the swirl.
It tastes fine, though. I think if you baked this it would just be an unremarkable bar-type cake. It has big coffee cake energy.
kelp 