All moved in, and ready to bake!
Sorry for the silence for the last few weeks, folks! Rich and I were moving to our new place here in the Annex, and didn’t have much time for food. Most of our meals for the last few weeks involved takeout or veggie burgers from whatever grocery store we happened to be near that day. Now that we’ve moved and we’re about half unpacked (and most of that half was the kitchen, hah!), I can go back to cooking and baking like I normally do you can look here.
One of the things I always do when I move to a new place is test out the oven. I know, that sounds like something obvious to do, but I’m always curious to see how the oven measures up as compared to previous apartments. Will it have a nice even heat? Will it have a decent broiler? What quirks will it have?
This time around, the quirk is the size of the stove/oven:
It might be hard to tell from the photo without another oven right beside it to compare, but ours is smaller than a ‘normal’ sized one. My large cookie sheet just barely fits into it, and you wouldn’t be able to place two round 8″ or 9″ cake pans side-by-side in there. When I first realized the oven was tiny, I was a bit worried it would be a problem; after all, I probably spend about 50% of my ‘hobby’ time in the kitchen! But so far the oven has served me very well. It heats quickly and pretty evenly, and much more accurately than my stove at our previous place. So far we’ve made a few different things in it, including cookies and muffins. I also have a loaf of bread in there right now.
The muffins I made in an attempt to have some quick, healthy snack food to take with me to work. They’d also make a tasty breakfast, if I do say so myself.
Oatmeal Raisin Spice Muffins – original recipe by Daily Decadent, modified by me
* 1 cup vanilla soy milk
* 1 cup quick-cook oats (not instant)
* 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* pinch of salt
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon of vanilla
* 1 egg, beaten
* 2 tablespoons of butter, softened
* 1 cup raisins
* boiling water to ‘plump’ raisins
Place raisins in a heat-safe bowl and pour boiling water over top, just enough to cover. Set aside to allow the raisins to plump up. This step can be done the night before if you wish.
Preheat oven to 400F. Grease or line with paper a 12 muffin tin.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine oats and soymilk. Stir in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. Then whisk in the brown sugar.
Once the raisins are looking nice and plump, drain off the water and add the raisins to the oat mixture along with the butter, vanilla and beaten egg. Stir to combine.
Place batter into prepared muffin tins and bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.
Makes 1 dozen muffins.