Homemaking 101

When I was about 13 years old and in junior high in Carrollton, Texas, I took a home economics class called Homemaking. This was circa 1984. The teacher, whose name I can't recall, was a former stay-at-home Mom who was finally an empty nester. She seemed ancient, but was probably in her forties! The class was all girls, of course, and although it has been 33 years since I was the class, I still remember quite a bit of what she tried to teach us about housekeeping, cooking, sewing and etiquette.

I thought of my Homemaking class last week, when I was trying to find some simple recipes for my daughter's new Easy Bake Oven. Basically, you have two choices when it comes to the actual baking/cooking with this oven. You can purchase the convenient Easy Bake Mixes, which will make approximately 2 very tiny cakes or 6 very tiny cookies, for about $5. Those are some pretty expensive little cakes, and not really the best tasting either! Or you make mixes from scratch at home for your budding young baker to use. There are two big things to work around, however, when you are baking from scratch for the Easy Bake Oven: 1) No raw eggs in the recipe; 2) The pan only holds about 3 tbsp. worth of batter! After searching the Internet a few times, I found some clever Moms who'd come up with recipes for mixes for cakes and cookies using boxed cake mix or flour and shortening; however, each recipe made something like 15 little cakes! That is alot of cake! And they had to be used within a certain amount of time due to no preservatives.

I decided to look through my own stash of recipes for some ideas, and came upon two yellowing photocopied pages of recipes from my junior high Homemaking class! I had kept them all through high school, college, and well into adulthood until right now, when I realized the recipes were exactly what I was looking for! There were two pages entitled Biscuit Mix Variations, the Biscuit Mix being Bisquick. From one recipe of Bisquick biscuit dough, which does not require any eggs(!), you can make: Cinnamon Pinwheels, Butterscotch Pinwheels, Cheese Biscuits, Jelly Biscuits (like little pastries), Bacon Biscuits, or Quick Sticky Buns! Furthermore, I realized you can halve the recipes, which is perfect for making about 2 batches of Easy Bake Oven sized treats.

Looking through the recipes reminded me that our teacher had given us a similar handout of Refrigerator Biscuit Recipes as well, which I have since lost to my regret. I still remember all the things we cooked using a tube of Pillsbury biscuits: Tuna Pockets, Mini-Pizzas, Pinwheels, etc. We were really cooking! I also remember having to "tell" on some mean 8th grade girls who had eaten all the grated pizza cheese during the cooking phase of class, leaving nothing for us poor 7th graders!

Last night, we made Butterscotch Pinwheels using my Homemaking class recipe, with chocolate chips added. It was so much fun! It takes 15 minutes to preheat the Easy Bake Oven, and only about 3 minutes to prepare one of the $5 Easy Bake Mixes, so it was much more satisfying for Thalia to be able to make the dough "from scratch", knead it, roll it, add the toppings, and slice into pinwheels. We actually used up the entire 15 minutes! They were really quite good too! The full recipe made 3 1/2 Easy Bake-sized batches of Pinwheels; next time, we will do a half recipe because even 6 year olds get "tired" of the prep work. :)

I also made up my own recipe last week for her Oven--Cheese Nachos. They actually sell a Mix for that, but I had heard that it is so disgusting that there was no way I was going to pay $5 for it! Thalia really, really wanted to try it, however, after seeing the picture on the Oven box (good marketing!), so I came up with this instead:

Cheesy Nachos for the Easy Bake Real Meal Oven

Ingredients:
a hunk of Velveeta Cheese
Tortilla Chips
Child-safe knife

Preheat Oven for 15 minutes. Let your child cut off slices of Velveeta. You won't need very much to fit the tiny pan.

Spray the tiny pan lightly with Pam. Put the cheese slices in the tiny pan.

Bake for about 6 minutes in the Oven. Cheese should be smooth and melted.

While cheese is heating, put a handful of Tortilla Chips in the Oven's warming chamber. They will get nice and warm while the cheese melts.

Put Chips on a plate and top with melted Cheese, or as my daughter likes to do it, dip the Chips into the pan of Cheese.

Serves 1 child.

Yes, I can heat up the same amount of cheese in the micro for 30 seconds, but for kids, it's all about the process, isn't it?! :)

And to my former Homemaking teacher, wherever you are--Thank You!