Little Beach House baking...

Sundays are spent resting and doing random things that don’t get done during the week. Today is actually hair coloring day and no, I’m not going to put a picture up of myself doing this. LOL! So while I am sitting here with smelly stuff on my head, I thought you might like to know more about my little oven. I read quite a bit online before we headed out and found a few things that work. So here is the little oven…15.5 inches wide.

I found a couple of pans that would work in it and have brought them along.

As you can see in the oven picture, there is a flat metal shelf under the rack. The gas flame is under there so you can’t use that as a shelf. I read about people who said this oven cooks weird and burns stuff because that shelf is so close to the rack above. I also read about some solutions. The first one was to use a small pizza stone on this shelf to distribute the heat better. Since this was a budget operation, Bill brought me home a porcelain floor tile from Home Depot. I was going to clean it before taking the picture, but let’s keep it real shall we.

Another item that has come in handy has been the oven thermometer. I found out this oven is about 50 degrees off, so set it accordingly.

As long as you wait for the oven to heat up to the right temperature, the cooking goes very well. I had baked muffins with success at first but got my first challenge when we visited the grandchildren. I wanted to bake a pound cake for strawberry shortcake. I thought the girls would get a kick out of baking in the small oven. We had a good time putting it all together and I used the 11 inch round cake pan to cook it in.

I always use a loaf pan at home so I wasn’t sure if it would overflow in a different pan. We couldn’t help but peek a few times and it stayed in the pan! So, the other day, I baked a tiny pork loin in the oven and we enjoyed it with noodles and salad. Afterward, I said, “This meal needs cake!” I had a cake mix from home stashed in the back of the pantry closet so dug it out and started in. Bill was a game guy and became my mixer as my electric one is sitting at home. Into the round pan it went and I again wondered if it would overflow. It came out great!

Then we both thought, no frosting! But we had raspberry jam in the fridge and that was even better! So these have been my adventures with baking so far. I’ll keep you up to date on any future baking endeavors. Thanks for reading.