Cooking in Japan
18. When I arrived in Japan, my apartment was so beautifully spacious and furnished, complete with an air conditioner to stave off the humid July. One thing thing that I couldn't find? An OVEN.
Now, this wouldn't be a problem except, after living in Young O senior year and being off meal plan, I became very attached to my oven baked dinners: baked mushrooms, baked veggies, baked fish, baked chicken, etc. Not to mention my already existing obsession with baking sweets: cookies, brownies, birthday cakes. But alas, my baking ways had to end.
Until now :)
Yesterday I had a craving for brownies, maybe because my cute people brownies left me on Sunday and chocolate brownies could fill the hole, but I was determined to make use of the brownie mix that I brought with me from America. It was going to be used, it was.
Yay google! "How to make brownies without an oven" led to a string of webpages informing me that using a microwave would not only be a suitable device for nuking my brownie batter, but that the average impatient joe actually use the microwave because it's about 4 times faster to make brownies that way.
So I went home and mixed up the batch like normal. I turned on my oven for about 5 minutes without anything inside, just to get some sort of pre-heating going. I buttered my 8x8x2 pan because I didn't have Pam or comparable greaser. Then I put the brownie batch in like normal, stuck it in the microwave, and turned the timer to about 10 min. A few min in, I realized the turntable wasn't working, so I carefully removed it. I just kept adding a few minutes here and there, overall probably it took about 15 min to cook, so more like only being 3 times faster. But was I in for a surprise, the brownies were so fudgy!!!
Now, this wouldn't be a problem except, after living in Young O senior year and being off meal plan, I became very attached to my oven baked dinners: baked mushrooms, baked veggies, baked fish, baked chicken, etc. Not to mention my already existing obsession with baking sweets: cookies, brownies, birthday cakes. But alas, my baking ways had to end.
Until now :)
Yesterday I had a craving for brownies, maybe because my cute people brownies left me on Sunday and chocolate brownies could fill the hole, but I was determined to make use of the brownie mix that I brought with me from America. It was going to be used, it was.
Yay google! "How to make brownies without an oven" led to a string of webpages informing me that using a microwave would not only be a suitable device for nuking my brownie batter, but that the average impatient joe actually use the microwave because it's about 4 times faster to make brownies that way.
So I went home and mixed up the batch like normal. I turned on my oven for about 5 minutes without anything inside, just to get some sort of pre-heating going. I buttered my 8x8x2 pan because I didn't have Pam or comparable greaser. Then I put the brownie batch in like normal, stuck it in the microwave, and turned the timer to about 10 min. A few min in, I realized the turntable wasn't working, so I carefully removed it. I just kept adding a few minutes here and there, overall probably it took about 15 min to cook, so more like only being 3 times faster. But was I in for a surprise, the brownies were so fudgy!!!
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