Guest blog by Tom
In an effort to increase the amount of people using microwaves for more than just reheating beans, I was tasked to demonstrate how easy it is to cook in a microwave combination (facility to use ‘convection’ and microwave cooking) oven. I decided to do an evening meal (main course and dessert) using only the Sharp R959SLMAA for cooking. On the menu: toad in the hole followed by chocolate orange cake.
It really is incredibly simple. To start, press the convection button to preheat the oven. The display will show the temperature and will reduce by 10 degrees each time the button is pressed; keep pressing until 200 is shown. Press start to begin the preheat stage. While this is happening, stick 8 sausages and some oil into a 20x30cm shallow dish and wiggle them about so everything gets a nice coating of oil. Once the oven is preheated it will alert you with a beep. Pop the dish in the oven on the rack at its lowest position. Set the timer to cook for 15 minutes, then press start again to begin cooking. You now have 15 minutes to make the batter mix. This is done with a simple recipe of 100g of plain flour, 1 egg and 300ml of milk. Put the flour in a large mixing bowl, and pour in the milk a bit at a time, mixing as you go. Then put the egg in and mix some more until a nice, smooth batter. When the sausages have finished, pour in the batter mix and cook some more for 40 minutes.
You now have 40 minutes to kill. Whether you wash up (laborious and unexciting) or put everything in a dishwasher (easy and efficient) you’ll still have time to kill so you could listen to some tunes on a Sonos system or maybe watch some Sky TV or even a film in 4K (all available at your nearest Hughes store or online, of course!).
“BEEP BEEP” goes the oven. Your toad in the hole is now ready for human consumption.
Now for the cake…
Cream 175g of margarine and 175g caster sugar in a bowl, then add 3 eggs and mix in, then fold in 175g of self-raising flour. Put half of the mixture in a separate bowl and stir in the grated rind of 1 orange. Put 50g of broken plain (or milk) chocolate in a bowl. Cook for 30 seconds on 100% power. When it’s finished, take it out and stir. Repeat the heating/mixing process until smooth and runny (it took me four times to get the right consistency). Stir the chocolate into the other mixture. Place alternative spoonful’s in a 20cm microwaveable cake dish and swirl together with a skewer to make a marbled effect. Simply cook for 6 minutes on 100% power.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – voila! You have cake. Let it cool for a bit then eat it. As you’ll see from the cake photos, I’m not all about the presentation but looks aren’t everything, apparently, and the cake tasted GOOOOOOD!
There are loads of great microwave recipes online so leave the beans and explore microwave cookery today. View our range of microwaves here or find your local store for a demo.
