#microwave cakes

[faerie-fang]

the winter king is sooo tumblr sexyman yes but can we talk about the candy queen being the best representation of your average tumblr user with Blorbo Disease — her fucking song???? “AND SO IM GONNA PUT YOU INTO A BLENDER WITH MEE, SET THE OVEN TO THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DEGREEES” nooo one understands love/obsession except for her and all of us

[fullcravings]

Snickerdoodle Mug Cake

[joolsdrawss]

Adventure time stuff (also Fionna and Cake)

I really enjoyed doing all of these, I think the Fern paint pen one is my favourite but I do also like the marker drawing Scarab

[probablybadrpgideas]

If one of the 5e classes has to go, which are you removing and why?

I make a lot of jokes about fighters but honestly barbarians. Just make berserker a fighter subclass

[petermorwood]

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. :->

[microwavefella]

I made a kinnies cake for Halloween night with my dear friend, the left side is mine and the right is hers, it was chaotic because we printed the characters too big

[notsoterrifyingrenegade]

Busy thinking about the similarities between Steven and Finn (obviously there are going to be some similarities since both shows aired around the same time and there’s overlap between the crews)

Both grew up going on adventures and received boatloads of trauma from it

Grew into adults not really sure how to handle their trauma so they use other techniques:

Getting super buff and becoming more violent (more so for Steven)

Insisting that everything is fine when it most definitely isn’t

Fixing everyone around them because they don’t know how to “fix” themselves (also "No prob, Bob" parallel!)

It's interesting though that Steven spends most of Future trying to move away from his past self (where most of the bad stuff happened) and not “be that little kid anymore”, while Finn’s bad stuff is currently happening in the present and will continue to follow him into the future so he’s actively regressing into his past self where it was still just a boy and his dog.

[fennecfiree]

I hear Gordon Ramsay pissing his pants. I hear the piss dripping down

[chamm0y]

thankyou to everybody who wished me a happy birthday!! 🫶🏻🫶🏻✨‼️ love you all!!

[brujite-de-gulubu]

Last workday before vacations and i started it with nothing but good news!

[pastasilly]

welcome home wips + doodle (and my oc, Patty Cake!!)

[obseletrix]

GUYS?!?!?!?!!!!!????

[fullcravings]

Easy 3 Ingredient Nutella Mug Cake

[phregnancy]

Okay… they didn’t just feed each other. They SHARED that one spoonful of mug cake. How am I supposed to be normal about this? How did the crew survive seeing this everyday? Like I bet Dan act so different with Phil around.

dan acts like That with phil around. teasing, poking, crowding him, complimenting him in a way that’s supposed to sound like an insult to mask sincerity

[travelling-my-little-pony]

Big Mac has found a slice of fruit cake.

In Peter Tavy, in Devon, England.

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

I'd never be one of those people to go around repping my univeristy with T-shirts and hats or whatever, but I have unironically been wearing my prof's weird unreleased merch for his obscure early 2000s animated show for like 2 years