How to bake a cake when your oven breaks down 怎用电饭锅烤蛋糕

Well. The unimaginable happened. Our trusty old oven gave up on our heavy usage. The days without an oven is painful. But there's always plan B in life I told the kids. Then, to the questioning eyes, I told them, "well, we still have our rice cooker". Incredulous eyes stared at me. "But how, mummy?" Since we still have our Thermomix that doubles as our cake mixer, we have two options for "baking" - one is to use the Air Fryer (which may be too small), the other obvious solution is to use our rice cooker. Ha. Is it possible ? Yes definitely.

Inspired by Submerryn, who has successfully used her rice cooker to bake all sorts of cakes, I have largely used her recipe to "bake" our butter cake in our rice cooker  😊

最近, 我们家的烤炉终于休克了. 用了这么多年, 还蛮不舍得的. 没了烤炉, 竟能用电饭锅来烤蛋糕. 想不到吧. 灵感来自一位网友Submerryn, 我照她的食谱来调整给我们美善品的用户参考. 想必应该不会太多人会突然“死”炉, 重点是, 饭锅竟然也能烤蛋糕咧. 

Ingredients

• 200g self raising-flour 自发粉 (参考以下自制食谱）
• 1 tsp baking powder fa xiao 发酵粉
• 160g sugar 糖
• 250g butter (I used salted butter) 奶油
• 3 eggs 鸡蛋
• 1 tsp vanilla essence 香草精
• 25ml fresh milk 鲜奶

Directions <Thermomix directions> <美善品说明>

• Combine 200g plain flour with 2tsp baking powder, 2/3 tsp cream of tartar <10 sec, speed 5>  
• <You may mill the sugar to icing sugar, 10 – 20 secs, speed 6, ensure the bowl is dry before you start>
• Cream sugar and butter until fluffy <Add butter and mix on speed 3 for 2 – 3 minutes or until light>
• While still mixing, add eggs one at a time until incorporated
• Add the remaining ingredients - vanilla essence, flour, baking powder, and finally milk
• Continue to mix the ingredients together until smooth <Speed 6, 1 minute or until the mixture becomes smooth>
• Pour into your rice cooker, press "cook" for about 45 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean
• Allow to cool on a rack before you slice

Tips : Depending on your brand/make of rice cooker, the built-in thermostat may shut it off automatically when it gets too hot. Usually, it may switch itself on again to continue cooking. If it does not, you may have to manually switch it from warm to cook. First time users, it is highly recommended for you to monitor.
I thought I was being smart when I jammed my spoon to make the rice cooker start in cook. Very soon, I realised that was not very clever. The rice cooker was unable to regulate the cooking and my first cake was burnt. 😢

The science around rice cooker cooking works around the air tight nature where hot air and water circulates to steam cook. You will find that rice cooker cakes are very moist. The bottom should brown quite nicely too. For a fan of moist cakes, the rice cooker cakes has been surprisingly moist, soft and fluffy.  Usually, at least half gets devoured very quickly.