Wonderling

Muffins, part deux

After my first attempt at baking in my *cough* oven, I figured that I should look online for some kind of solution to my lame-o excuse for an oven. I found two things that helped me immensely.

1. If your food burns on the bottom, but is still doughy on top the heating element on the top of the oven is likely not working.

2. move the rack up, away from the bottom heating element.

Sure enough, the heating element on the top of my oven is not working. I'm sure it hasn't worked in years. So I tried moving the rack up to the top rung and moved my oven thermometer up to that rack as well (I think if it's too close to the bottom it doesn't really tell me the temp near the muffins)

Here's how my second attempt turned out:

These are cornmeal muffins and they turned out really good. I probably could have left them in for a couple minutes longer, but moving the rack up in the oven definitely did the trick. I still called my landlord and asked him if the element could be fixed...I have some leaky faucets that need fixing anyway.

First baking adventure at my apartment

The only thing I've been brave enough to put in the oven at my apartment so far has been Gordon's breaded fish fillets and they were a disaster. Since then I've tried to "figure out" how my oven actually works. It's really old and really small. When you turn it on it goes to 500 degrees right away, but if you turn it down it goes to 150 degrees. I left it on for a half hour one day to see exactly what temp was where on the dial and made a mark next to it.

Last night I decided to finally test out a baking project in my evil oven.

This is what I have to work with. :(

batter and cups ready

The finished product

They turned out ok. The bottoms were over done a little and the top was not quite done enough, but they are edible and definitely worth making again! I'm not sure I will attempt anything more than muffins or cookies, I'm afraid a cake or pie would not turn out.