Is a toaster oven an Easy Bake oven?

September 9, 2016 12:21 PM

My daughter came home from school the other day telling me about how her friend was given a very tiny oven, that is also "very cute" but that it can do real things like make cakes and it is for kids! I said, "Was it an Easy-bake oven?" And she looked up at me, amazed, and said, "Yes! Mama, how did you know that?!"

So, I asked her if that sounded like a fun thing to have and she really felt like it would be so then I was thinking... I do have a toaster oven. Granted, it is not pink or purple or in any way "very cute" but if I got miniature pans then she could, conceivably, bake things in it. However, despite my daughter's awe at how I know all things, I never had an Easy Bake growing up so what am I missing about this idea? Is an Easy Bake easier? Safer? Less complex? Are the recipes for it so different than what would be done in a toaster or regular oven?

Can she use it unsupervised in a way that you cannot with the toaster oven? Can she Easy Bake on the floor of her bedroom with her friends? I would not allow her to use the toaster oven unsupervised...yet. She is 5-1/2 years old and takes directions well but still does goofy things (obviously). And the bonus of making do with the toaster oven is that when she tires of the Easy Bake we just carry on with our toaster oven without needing to store this toy until we hoist it off on someone else.

So, school me on the Easy Bake! Awesome, a waste or somewhere in between?

posted by amanda to Food & Drink (36 answers total)

iiirc it uses a light bulb for heat to make it safer for children to operate
posted by thelonius at 12:25 PM on September 9, 2016 [29 favorites]

IME it'd be hard to burn yourself with an Easy Bake, which uses a very narrow slot you mostly can't fit child-sized hands through, whereas a toaster oven is basically burn city waiting to happen

However, baking the little proprietary glops of Easy Bake mix doesn't stay thrilling (or cheap) for very long, though I'm sure interesting Easy Bake recipe hacks exist
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:28 PM on September 9, 2016 [14 favorites]

They removed the light bulbs in 2011 (incandescent bulbs phased out due to federal law) and now they use a real heating element that can reach up to 375F.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:29 PM on September 9, 2016 [14 favorites]

It's awesome at first, like REALLY AWESOME. Then (rather quickly) it becomes somewhere in-between a waste and awesome, because you have to buy the special mixes to bake stuff or go online and figure out how to scale real recipes to use in the EasyBake and both of those things are kind of a pain. Then (even quicker now) it becomes pretty much a waste. Your daughter will have tired of the awesomeness, you will have tired of the constant recipe crap, and it will become yet another toy she has grown out of.

But I cannot undersell how SUPER AWESOME that first part is. My now-16-year-old still has clear and fond memories of the EasyBake Oven that her Nana got for her the year she turned five and stopped using approximately 15 minutes after that (okay, it was a few months. Still.).
posted by cooker girl at 12:30 PM on September 9, 2016 [31 favorites]

Agreed- the Window of Awesome for the Easy-Bake is damn narrow, and if your child likes to bake, I say get them in the kitchen for real! :-)
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 12:39 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

You can basically use regular cake mix in an Easy Bake oven, so that whole problem goes out the window.

We had one, and the kids thought it was super cool and it would be hard to seriously hurt yourself using one, although it still isn't something that I would feel comfortable with a 5 1/2 year old using COMPLETELY unsupervised. It's something that we had as a definitely kitchen only toy and, at least until the kids got a bit older, it was something that we were at the very least in the kitchen with them.

I'm basically in complete agreement with cooker girl-- the kids really really loved it for a short amount of time, even though the practical parenting side of me thinks it's pretty silly.

Kid view: "It's small and pink and super cute and fun!"
Parent view: "I can just help you make some cupcakes in the toaster oven."
posted by gregvr at 12:40 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Easy Bake ovens are super-popular among the kids her age who sign up for the charity I run, so if you don't mind taking a loss, I'm sure other such programs could promptly find a happy home for it once she's done.
posted by teremala at 12:43 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's a fabulous channel on youtube that does tests of kids' toys and candy called Lucky Penny Shop (the dude is just so eager and sincere! it's wonderful). He has an entire playlist devoted to the Easy Bake Oven here. You should watch a few, they'll really give you a great look at what the toy is about.

I believe this is the current iteration of the EBO, but I don't shop for these things so I'm not 100% sure. You can watch it and see what's involved. They come with packets of mixes.

Early models of the EBO did not come with mixes. Instead, they came with a recipe booklet to make your own from scratch, which you can see in this video. A more economical (and better for experimentation!) option is once you run out of the mixes that come with the oven, search online for the DIY recipes. There are TONS.

The upsides to the Easy Bake Oven: safe (if you watch those videos you'll see that there's a pusher and a cooling chamber so the kid can't come into contact with the heating element or a hot pan, which means it doesn't require active supervision, a definite plus), cute, she'll have the same thing as her friend. Downsides: unitasker, costs money, takes up space.

If you decide not to go with the EBO and just use your toaster oven and DIY recipes instead, my strong recommendation would be to pimp out the accessories. Hit up the Wilton aisle at your nearby big box craft store and go to town. Maybe give your kid a budget and let her buy whatever pretty sprinkles strike her fancy. There's a definite social utility to having the same thing all your friends have, but if you can say well I don't have the oven but I have GLITTER YOU CAN EAT, that's one up on the EBO kits.
posted by phunniemee at 12:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [17 favorites]

The whole appeal though (for those first thrilling few minutes) is that it's miniature. A toaster oven is not at all the same thing.
posted by HotToddy at 12:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

The whole appeal though (for those first thrilling few minutes) is that it's miniature. A toaster oven is not at all the same thing.

Also, don't underestimate the "I can do it myself without adult help" thrilling part.

You can also pick up used light bulb models on eBay quite frequently. (There are a bunch there now.) The old ones use 100 w bulbs which are hard but not impossible to find.

To answer your question: An Easy Bake is a very different thing than a toaster oven. It is a toy, designed to be used unsupervised by children. There is also something of a cult that has grown up around it. (Not in a bad way.) You can certainly bake with her as well (although i wouldn't bake a cake in a toaster oven), but the Easy Bake would be something all her own.
posted by anastasiav at 1:10 PM on September 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

It might be worth looking at the Easy Bake specs to see whether they give you enough control that you could use them for things other than cake, like baking sculpey and other types of crafts. Maybe heating up food in general, melting cheese on things to make pseudo-pizzas, etc.
posted by trig at 1:13 PM on September 9, 2016

if you have a toaster oven and you would be supervising her anyways with an EBO, you could always buy the EBO packets online, for instance. also, if i wanted to get creative i might spray paint our oven with purple high heat spray paint (cover the glass part up with cardboard first.)
definitely definitely get the glitter phunniemee is talking about. then you have a better thing than the original!
posted by andreapandrea at 1:16 PM on September 9, 2016

It might be worth looking at the Easy Bake specs to see whether they give you enough control that you could use them for things other than cake, like baking sculpey and other types of crafts. Maybe heating up food in general, melting cheese on things to make pseudo-pizzas, etc.

There are a number of cookbooks just for Easy Bake out there.
posted by anastasiav at 1:19 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

A good friend of mine and I bonded when we discovered that, as boys in the 1970s/early 1980s when such things were still quite gendered, we had both always secretly wanted Easy-bake Ovens because you can bake cakes and cookies by yourself! In your room! I always liked helping my mom bake stuff too, but appeal of the EBO was definitely that it was a for-kids thing you could use on your own that made actual baked goods.
posted by usonian at 1:24 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Agree that the fun is short-lived but VERY fun, sort of like the child's version of doing mdma instead of just drinking like a normal person. I had one in the 80s and I really only remember using it once but I definitely remember that one time and it is a fond memory and worth the $40 or whatever they cost. It can be donated or regifted later easily!
posted by masquesoporfavor at 1:35 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Awesome. Top 5 toys I had as a kid, hands down. Definitely solidified my love for baking, and laid the foundation for my evolving career in educational toy design. :)
posted by Hermione Granger at 1:56 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am about to turn 40 and I'm still sad that I never got an Easy Bake oven when I was 5. So I would say not a waste, even if she only uses it a few times. Then you can pass it along to another kid, or garage sale it, or craigslist it. And then when she's 40 she won't be sad that she never got to bake tiny little cakes in a the cute little oven. This thread makes me want to get one for myself. lol.
posted by ilovewinter at 1:58 PM on September 9, 2016 [20 favorites]

Yeah, when I was 14 I mentioned in passing that I'd always wanted an Easy Bake Oven and my aunt got me one for Christmas and it was AWESOME. Even though by that age I was baking bread and cakes from scratch (and had been for several years), the miniature cuteness and sheer genius of using a lightbulb for a heating element totally thrilled me and I still look back very fondly on it.
posted by annathea at 2:29 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

I had an easy bake oven (and never used it), and I am not a parent. If I were a parent with a 5.5 year old, I would give very clear instructions for the toaster oven, go through the process with them a couple times, and let the kid have at it. Only while I was in the house because toaster ovens do catch fire, but still.

They make colorful oven-proof silicone molds in all sorts of fun shapes, by the way.
posted by aniola at 2:39 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

When I was a child, my mother bought the EBO mixes and pans and cooked the cakes in her big oven. I always felt it wasn't as cool as the actual EBO would have been. I think part of the appeal of the EBO was that I would be able to do everything myself, but I still liked having just the pans and mixes.
posted by FencingGal at 3:22 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I saved up for like three months (babysitting money) to buy myself an EasyBake when I was like 12, because my parents had always refused on the grounds that it was Wasteful And Silly. It was the first thing I ever bought for myself with my own earned money, and it took all the money I had - I had to get a ride to Sears to pick it up because I couldn't afford the shipping.

By 12 it was really too late - I was disappointed fairly quickly because I couldn't do half as much as I could with, well, a toaster oven.

Thing is, by that point I'd been lusting after the thing for like eight years. It was ridiculous, comparable to what I experienced with the pogo stick which I got and then learned was basically impossible to use. If they'd plunked down the $20 when I was little, I'd have both liked it better and also been less aware of how inadequate the device is. They would also have avoided at least thirty or forty useless and repetitive explanations about how it wasn't going to be as nice as I expected.

(Do not get a pogo stick though. The pogo ball is safer, easier, and more fun. Assuming they still make pogo balls.)
posted by SMPA at 3:38 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

The 1957 edition of the Betty Crocker boys and girls cookbook was reprinted a few years ago.
posted by brujita at 3:41 PM on September 9, 2016

Best answer: Sometimes we talk about purchasing "experiences" over "things". Basically with an EasyBake Oven you are purchasing the experience of that one afternoon making all the tiny cookies and cakes you possibly can until you get tired of it. Compare it to an afternoon at the carnival or water park and don't think twice about whether or not it will still be used in a year.
posted by annathea at 4:01 PM on September 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

Buy the thing. It's like $40. Get some extra packets of ingredients or look up some recipes to convert standard box mix to that size or whatever too.

I had one when I was also about 10 maybe? And I was a little too old for it. But I do remember LOVING it for the time I used it. It was also short lived for me - but in my case I think I went through the packets included in the box and never ended up getting any refills nor my parents caring to help me make more. So in my case it was phased out due to lack of refills, rather than me losing interest. As a parent you can maintain that interest by getting the things they need and if it falls out of favor you can give it away.

Definitely use it on a counter and supervised but you pop it in and out with a little claw thing.

I totally understand not wasting money/spoiling kids/having too much crap. But it's a pretty small device that can easily be donated or shared. Hell, I'm an adult and I like the idea of it.

A toaster oven is totally lame for kids. Sorry.
posted by Crystalinne at 4:05 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had an easy bake oven (and never used it), and I am not a parent. If I were a parent with a 5.5 year old, I would give very clear instructions for the toaster oven, go through the process with them a couple times, and let the kid have at it. Only while I was in the house because toaster ovens do catch fire, but still.

Toaster ovens are massive burn and fire hazards. As an 11 year old, I ended up burning off the top of my fingers off on our toaster oven making toast. I would not let a six year old use one unattended.

Never had an easy bake oven, but did have a creepy crawlers oven, which was awesome. I vote for the silly toy.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 4:34 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm another vote for buying it. I am 60 years old and I have vivid memories of my EBO. And one point not mentioned yet was how educational this toy is. The measuring, mixing, and timing were a real challenge to my 6-year-old self. It was like chemistry that you could eat!
posted by raisingsand at 4:38 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

Nth buying it if you can.

My best friend from college had an EBO when she was about 5 years old, but it was accidentally destroyed by an unknowing aunt when she left the plastic claw thing in way too long. Through a long chain of events, someone in my friend's family replaced her EBO a couple years ago. My friend was so psyched she brought it with her when she came to visit one weekend. We had tons of fun playing with it!

We did discover that the mixes we tried were very terrible and didn't google how to make regular cakes, so it was short-lived, but super fun. Since you can make non-mix cakes with it, I'd definitely go for it. Said friend just moved and if she still has it, I'm going to check if she wants to try some recipes when I next visit. I doubt an EBO will capture your daughter's interest quite as long as it has my best friend's, but it can be really fun toy!
posted by wiskunde at 5:19 PM on September 9, 2016

Wanted EBO as child, never got one. Still sad about it.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:38 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

My mom also invited me to bake vastly superior cake in the real oven and refused to buy me an EBO. It is Not. The. Same. This is literally the only toy that I can remember begging for and desperately wanting that my parents did not buy me. I am absolutely certain I asked for other toys that I did not receive, but this is the only one that hurt.
posted by gatorae at 7:02 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Data point: when I was a kid we set the toaster oven on fire. (We were stupid kids trying to make caramel and didn't realize how easily sugar would catch fire.) It's fortunate that the fire didn't spread because we were unsupervised in a foreign country where we didn't speak the language and had no clue how to call emergency services. The fire petered out after several harrowing minutes. But, yeah, that could have ended badly.

The moral of the story is, just buy your kid the Easy Bake Oven. They're going to experiment without you around at some point, so it's better you let them do their natural experimentation with something that won't catch fire easily.
posted by Soliloquy at 7:23 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I totally went the other way - I got the giant box of mixes, with miniature kitchen gear and then used a real oven. That was also great. I also just ate the mixes. And the icing. Without making them into iced cakes first. Would having the oven made it much better? Yes. Yes - I think it would have been amazing. It's about autonomy and control of making yourself a special treat.
posted by zenon at 8:18 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Count me as another now adult who desperately wanted an Easy Bake Oven as a kid and is still very sad about the fact that I never had one. It was definitely the number one toy that I really, really, really wanted. Like, reading this question, I had a totally irrational urge to go out and buy myself an easy bake oven, even though I have both a regular oven and a toaster oven.

By 5 or 6, I think I was already helping my mom do basic baking tasks, but it was just not the same. There was definitely the fun and autonomy factor, but I also know at that age I was just so very much into miniature versions of things. That was definitely a big part of the appeal for an Easy Bake Oven for me, and that can't be replicated as easily with a toaster oven.

I mean, I'm sure I would have gotten bored with it pretty quickly, but if you can afford it, I think you should spring for an Easy Bake Oven. Otherwise your kid might end up like me as a child, playing with a little miniature toy oven/kitchen set, fantasizing about what it would be like if it was an actual Easy Bake Oven that made actual food.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:06 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

Data point: In about first grade, I asked my mom if I could have an Easy Bake Oven. She said, why?, you can just use the real oven. I said ----- reeeaaallly? I was so excited. And I learned how to use the real oven. Very happy memory.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:06 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sometimes it's nice to figure out how to do something new without constantly being told to be careful.
posted by rhizome at 12:38 AM on September 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have been a professional pastry cook. I'm still wary of home toaster ovens because it is so easy to burn the hell out of yourself and set it on fire. No way would I let a 6 year old touch one.

Get her the Easy-Bake! Doing it by yourself is such a huge thrill at that age. I loved mine, although I graduated to the real oven pretty quickly.
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:38 PM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Easy Bake, man. Using a toaster oven is too accident prone, and as others have said, the magic is in being able to do it yourself without worries.

I also had one, used it maybe 2-3 times, and that was it, but I still very vividly remember those experiences! We had a mini-cake tea party and I distinctly remember the flavor of the little cake.
posted by stoneandstar at 7:17 PM on September 10, 2016 [3 favorites]