My Toaster Oven (Which Is Magical)

My toaster oven is my favorite piece in the suite's kitchenette. Our teeny tiny workspace came with a small refrigerator, sink, and microwave. And about one foot of counter space. College juniors and seniors cannot be trusted with ovens or stovetops; we'd obviously be blowing up buildings because we haven't evolved from our high school chemistry days of (intentionally) failed Bunsen burner experiments. On a tour of my future home for nine months in the spring of sophomore year, I started drawing up mental lists. Microwave cart for extra counter space, the unused rice cooker from my parent's pantry, maybe some portable burners, a nice wok, and, definitely, a toaster oven. A BIG toaster oven.

[Wok, wok, wok! P.S. My hand looks really weird in this picture! :-P]

And I got one. It was my main birthday present that summer. It was big enough to fit a nine-inch pizza (which I finally tested this November) or a mini-meatloaf pan. But it also does things that it shouldn't be able to do, magic things.

This is the time of year when I stop going to the grocery store twice per week (I am terrible at planning lists in advance and always manage to forget the ginger root). Instead, because I really don't feel like transporting home ¼ of the refrigerator along with my essentials when I drive home for Winter Break, I try to use up everything perishable. Everything. So I saw this half-bag of cookie dough in the back of the fridge, and thought I'd like to try making more of my cheesecakes with a variation on the crust. The result was passably tasty, as my guinea pig suitemates avow, but seriously skewed my ideas of how toasters ovens actually work.

I started with a thin layer of cookie dough (chocolate chip) lining the tins of a muffin tray, popped them into the t.o. for 6 minutes, and out came… muffin-like things. What? I guess maybe there isn't as much difference as I thought between muffins and cookies. The only other explanation (which makes more sense, considering the incredible variety of food it can cook) is that my toaster oven is magic. I feel like this could easily be true, and maybe not even limited to my own t.o. You see, a similar thing happened to one of my suitemates: she was baking cookies, and got scones. I like to think about toaster ovens as magic, because that would make me a magician. Coolness!