Baking Without An Oven. Or, the Japanese find ways for almost *anything*

I notice a lot of people want to try baking but don't have an oven. I feel their plight as for many years, I didn't have a one myself. When I got a boyfriend, I wanted to make goodies for him and searched for ways to bake even without an oven. Fortunately for me, I was in Japan at the time and the Japanese have a how-to book for every need you can possibly think of. Here are some of the things I've tried.

BAKING WITH A FRY PAN
The first baking book I bought had the title "Baking Cakes and Breads with a Fry Pan." The photos in the book looked all so wonderfully delicious, and they were all made with equipment I already had on hand - a frying pan! I tried the easiest but most scrumptious looking recipe, a cookie. Unfortunately, it did not turn out well at all. Even my American friend told me "I don't believe there is such a thing as a bad cookie, but that cookie is BAD." That discouraged me from baking with frying pans and I shelved the book. Though now that I know a bit more about baking, I might try another recipe from there again. After all, that time I could not properly control the heat of the electric range and didn't know how to properly measure and handle ingredients.


BAKING WITH A MICROWAVE OVEN
The second book I bought was "Making Pastries Using A Microwave Oven." The one recipe I tried from there was such a disaster I got discouraged from baking anything at all, period. The recipe was looked very simple and straightforward (peanut butter cookies - do I see a pattern here?) and I even checked that our microwave had the specified wattage, but the end result was so bad I threw everything into the trash. I should've trusted my instincts when I looked at the instructions to zap for 8 minutes and thought "whoa, that's way too long." I didn't even reach that long as I could smell something burning not even halfway through. I ended up with hard, crumbly pucks with sugar granules still clearly visible in them. Yecchh.


BAKING WITH A RICE COOKER
My third book was "Cakes and Breads with a Rice Cooker." As the saying goes, the third time's the charm. I initially baked my first ever chocolate cake in a regular rice cooker and came up with something edible, but with a burnt bottom. Upon careful rereading, I discovered that the rice cooker to use was was an IH model (Induction Heating). Yes, they are much more expensive than the regular kind but make very delicious rice. Since I was itching to bake something and sick of looking for the disappearing rice cooker (it was a shared dorm appliance), I bit the bullet and bought one. I came up with passable results and a splendid Pumpkin Cheesecake, despite the fact that at the time, my measurement and mixing methods were probably a disaster. I'd make cakes with my rice cooker again, but sadly, I can't use it here because its a 110v appliance


BAKING WITH A KALDERA (STOCKPOT)
I haven't actually tried this, but a cousin of mine bakes cakes and cupcakes using a big kaldera with soil padded at the bottom on the stovetop. She learned of this technique from a local baking class.


Funny enough, the books mentioned above actually got good reviews from Amazon Japan. So maybe there was just something wrong with me/my microwave/my baking karma for the day. I think I'll dig up my books and try baking with them again (though I am still wary of the microwave book).