I decided to dedicate this post to those who had been wondering for ages if you should and wanted to try baking in microwave oven. I had researched quite a bit but I could hardly find anyone who had tried the same recipes in both types of ovens and hence, let's start.
I had tried a lot of recipes in my microwave oven before I bought an oven recently. Beware to all, even though you can bake in a microwave oven, not all the recipes meant for oven would work well in the microwave oven. I had tried Japanese soft cotton cheesecake, New York cheesecake, apple cake, banana cake and several more. The only recipes that turned out very well in the microwave oven were New York cheesecake and marbled butter cake. And even so, I had to bake them in cupcake sizes or smaller pans with larger surface area as I had uncooked butter cake (in a supposedly normal depth pan) before.
From what I gathered online, a microwave oven uses electromagnetic radiation to agitate water and other polarized molecules in the food. Friction between the excited molecules generates heat. Since the water molecules are excited, they would be unable to bind with the starch molecules and hence, the dough or batter would turn out hard like a piece of rock. That is very true. Often, my cakes browned on the surface and even became dark brown, to the extent of being inedible while the middle portion remained uncooked. The other portions would be dry. The cakes were often in a mess. Imagine I often had to scrap away the top, cut out the dry portions or they would become drier and put the uncooked middle batter back into the oven for minutes I was unsure of. I would totally not recommend baking in microwave oven to save your energy and effort if you want a true cake.
Also, microwave oven cooks food much faster than an oven and hence, if the recipe calls for 45 mins of baking time, it would have browned on the surface and done within 20 to 25 mins in a microwave oven, leaving the middle portion uncooked. Trust me, I have failed so many countless times but well, you never know until you try haha.
Many of my recipes such as orange cake, japanese soft cotton cheesecake and some others turned out tasting like "kueh" which had a sticky gluey texture and a strong egg smell. It lacked the moisture and texture or anything like what it should be. I used to think that it was the recipes I used until I had succeeded in Japanese soft cotton cheesecake using my convectional oven.
I often use my microwave oven to heat up my overnight food from the fridge. It serves well for a fast alternative but it costs my food to be dry and sometimes burnt if you leave them in there for too long!
Fortunately or should I say, finally my family added an oven to our kitchen. It costed about 100 SGD from Giant and I am still trying to slowly get used to it. Note: All ovens are different as well.
I referred to the following links and research to gather my knowledge. Do read more to understand the concepts and logic behind them. I won't call myself an expert but I would say I am sharing my experiences which I wanted to know which I can achieve and which I can not.
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| Oven |
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| Controls of the oven |
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| Microwave oven |
Cheryl Miyo
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