In other news, Mary Jane and I baked an apple pie together yesterday for the first time.
I recently took a cue from Hannah, who decided to make a good toaster oven a centerpiece in her kitchen. Do you know, cooking with small children gets a lot easier and, I think, safer when you put a toaster oven down at their level?
It sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but hear me out. Stovetop cooking is really, really tough for a little one. You can put them on a stool or something like the Learning Tower and stand right by them, and indeed I do that with my little ones, helping them stir things while they learn about Safety With Hot Things. But look, you're up on a stool (meaning falling is a real possibility), there's actual flames inches from your kids' clothes, and the surfaces are extremely hot. I advocate cooking with children, so they can learn safety and competency from a young age. But there is no denying that stovetop cooking with small children requires great care and attention.
Baking things in the oven, say, a casserole, is not so bad. Casseroles are great things for medium-sized kids to make when they are old enough to be put in charge of dinner once in a while. Everything goes in a pan and the pan goes in the oven. Cheese and onion enchiladas are Oscar's favorite dinner to make, there's no raw meat to handle and no browning, just layering and baking. Recently he's learned to make buttermilk biscuits and egg bake, too. But the oven door is so big! It's tough for a kid to put anything in the oven, it's tough for a kid to take anything out of the oven, it's really tough for a kid to stick a toothpick in to see if it's done. Whenever Oscar's doing that, I'm torn between calling out "Be careful! Remember the door is really hot!" and "Hurry up, check it and close the door! All the hot air is getting out!"
This is where the toaster oven is so great. The most important thing is that it be stable so it can't be knocked down. But if you place it on a low table so there's no getting on and off a stool to mess with, and have enough low-table space next to it to set a hot pan, a three- or four-year old can be taught how to put things into the oven, how to set up a trivet so there's a place for the hot pan to go, how to wear hot mitts, and how to take the pan out of the oven. Really. I mean, you have to know your own child, and you have to know how much supervision is necessary, but believe me, the toaster oven is far superior to either the stovetop or the regular oven here. And yes, there is a possibility of them burning themselves, but I think the likelihood of minor burns (Teachable Moment Burns, we call them around here) may be higher, the likelihood of catastrophic burns is much lower than either with the stovetop or the regular oven. At my house, we like our teachable moments to come without skin grafts.
So, I followed Hannah's lead and I got a few pans sized for my (pretty small) toaster oven: an 8-inch cake pan, a set of mini loaf pans, an 8-inch fluted tart pan (the kind with the bottom that pops out), a "broil and roast" pan (a rack inside a little roasting pan), and a cookie sheet. I can also fit a regular-sized loaf pan and a 9×9 Pyrex dish in there. What I haven't found yet is a 6-cup muffin tin — I bought one, but the handles turned out to be just big enough to prevent its fitting in my toaster oven. Damn! I gave it to Hannah, whose toaster oven is bigger.
I've been experimenting a little bit with preparing food in the toaster oven, and collecting recipes for the children to follow. Meatballs baked in spaghetti sauce are very do-able, even for the smallest. Oscar successfully made chili cheese egg bake a couple of weeks ago. Two nights ago Mary Jane cooked the hot dogs in the broil 'n' roast pan, all by herself. And last night, like I said, M.J. and I made our first apple pie. I took it out of the oven, but she put it in.
I won't belabor the recipe here except to say that if you halve the recipe for a 10-inch, two-crust apple pie, you come pretty close to the right size for an 8-inch two-crust apple pie, with a little extra pastry (which is a good idea when you have nibbly helpers). Our pie got a little burned on the top before it was done in the middle, but I slipped a piece of aluminum foil in there to protect the top crust a bit and it turned out very tasty. And it was a really nice size, too! One mom and three kids don't need an entire 10-inch pie.
I wish I had a spot in my kitchen for the toaster oven to live permanently available to kids, but I'm afraid that's not to be — my spaces have to multitask pretty hard. But I do have a little table in my kitchen that is big enough for the oven and a trivet, and so a little bit of setup is all I need.
bearing blog 