Microwave Sponge Cake (eventually)
Long ago, @dduane and I had a Whirlpool combi microwave - micro, grill, fan oven - and It Was Great, big enough to use as a proper oven when what needed cooked in a proper oven was small enough that powering up the big proper oven in the cooker was a bit much.
Still with me...?
IIRC it was one of those Christmas presents where Mum, ever-practical, told us; "get yourselves something really useful but not too expensive (I did say practical!) and I'll go halves."
In 2016, after something like 15 years of pretty-well daily use for one thing and another, the old thing expired by stages, micro first, grill second, oven last - it made great bread up until the end - and went to recycling heaven.
*****
We couldn't find a one-for-one replacement (we needed a free-standing counter-top appliance, everyone was selling built-in), so until once was available (optimism) we bought an ordinary microwave.
NB, this and its successors were only used for ordinary microwave things like reheating, defrosting and dealing with freeze-cook stuff. They got nothing like the amount of use of the old combi, mostly because of being incapable of doing a lot of it. As things turned out, this didn't help much.
About eighteen months later, we had to buy another. If a microwave's enamel interior develops a crack (to this day I don't know how), moisture gets in, rust begins and the enamel pulls off the bare metal. That's when you get "sparking".
This demo is deliberate; believe me, when it's unexpected it's even worse.
A private welder show or lightning storm at the end of the kitchen counter when all you want is a hot cuppa is distinctly unsettling. Also, it's only going to get worse, and we could imagine - boy, could we - what "Much Worse" might look like.
To the recycle dump!
(NB, micros with stainless steel interiors don't seem to do this, probably because they're already tuned to deal with the bare metal.)
The replacement, another ordinary micro, Just Up And Died after eighteen months and, guess what, the quote for a check-up and replacements-if-required was as much as the price of a new one.
(Inkjet printers seem to operate on this principal too.)
To the recycle dump again!
We got a third new one (which BTW is still running just fine, because it's been downgraded to Extra, read on), totalled up what we'd spent on ordinary microwaves, said a few well-chosen words about planned obsolescence and the "Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Economic Inequality" and got ourselves a pre-pay credit card whose top-ups were dedicated to Get A Combi Again.
We didn't bother with GACA baseball caps.
That would have been silly.
I don't know if these cards exist in the USA; we treat them as the modern version of a piggy-bank...
...except that to get at the money you need two people acting in accord.
*****
And in 2021 we got one.
Okay, this next bit is going to read like an ad.
It isn't, because the appliance is discontinued. (Whirlpool FINALLY do something similar but not identical.) It's just enthusiastic users discovering there's even more to a gadget than expected.
*****
The New One even bigger than the old one, which had 28 litres capacity; the new one was 33 L (was .99 ft³, is now 1.16 ft³). In non-tech terms, wow, More Room To Cook In.
Reading the figures was no help (to me, anyway) in visualising what a maw the thing had, but opening the door did that and no mistake.
I said something to DD about "bite radius"...
...and she instantly responded with "anyway, we delivered the bomb".
We're a quotesy household. ;->
BTW, The New One does a very good job on seafood, too...
*****
Since we got this, almost exactly two years ago, we've used it from reheating tea to roasting meat to making chilli / goulash / stew / curry (you can run the oven / grill separately or add simultaneous zaps of microwave for much less cooking time) to baking bread.
One of the best things about it is that when the set cooking time is done, the appliance switches off automatically. No risk of busyness, absent-mindedness or out-in-the-garden-ness ending in clouds of smoke, ruined food and possibly even worse.
As for breadmaking, it has a dough-rise setting which is a Time Machine, reducing a two-hour "doubled in size" rise time to about 35-45 minutes...
It also has the most reliable Defrost Butter setting either of us have ever encountered, turning a rock-solid butter brick from the freezer into something spreadable while never - to date - doing the "never mind a butter-knife, give me a spoon or a paintbrush" thing.
*****
However...
There's also a "Chef Setting" where there are some simple recipes. Here's the pastry page.
Basically, you assemble and mix the ingredients, input the correct settings and the machine does all the timing, heating and cooking.
We'd never used this until yesterday, when DD said, "Let's try the sponge cake..."
Yes, this post was entitled "Microwave Sponge Cake (eventually)..." and here we are...
We did all the measuring correctly and checked it by pouring the mixture into a baking container while on the scale, wondering betimes why the recipe says 900g, the ingredients total 925 and what actually poured into the container reads 906... Weird. Really weird.
Then we put the container into the oven, entered the correct code, and let things do what they were going to do.
A little later we discovered something else about the recipe besides a weight anomaly.
It didn't mention the required size of the container. Or or how much the mixture was likely to rise.
It rose...
Let's say more than we expected...
The fluted ceramic container used for baking this one makes it look like a Vesuvius cupcake; not quite a pyroclastic flow, but a lot of flow regardless.
Once it cooled we separated the sponge-cake from the escaped sponge in the same way as sculptors work with wood or marble - "Chip away everything that doesn't look like a cake" - and found that despite its misshapen looks, it tasted pretty good.
So today DD made another, this time using a larger container.
...and this time it stayed put until removed using the cunning base-and-lifting-straps of baking parchment.
It's not the loftiest or best-risen sponge cake either of us have ever seen (a smaller-diameter higher-sided container would probably deal with that) BUT if there's something needing sponge cake in a hurry - this went from cupboard ingredients to done and cooling in less than 55 minutes - that treatment seems to fit the bill.
We're now wondering what other secrets lurk in the simple recipe pages; falafel, quiche Lorraine, stuffed peppers, even Flammkuchen* from scratch.
(*Though I have my own views about Flammkuchen, mostly involving a plane flight...)
And we'll be paying a lot more attention to what size of dish we put them in. :->