Rice Cooker Cake

Today I tried out something I’d been meaning to do for a while – baking with my rice cooker. One of the things I’ve missed greatly since coming to Japan is an oven. They’re not as common over here as in Western countries, and certainly you won’t find them in old student dormitories like mine! Rice cookers are surprisingly versatile though, and one of the things you can use them for is cake so I decided to give it a try.

In the UK we don’t tend to use cake mixes as much as other countries, instead making cakes from scratch, but alas, I couldn’t find any Western-style flour in the supermarket I usually go to, so I had to settle for a basic cake mix instead. It was plain, so I customised it by adding lemon juice. I used this recipe, but without the icing and filling.

This is the result. I think it went quite well for my first attempt, and it tastes pretty good although the texture needs a bit of work. Next time I’ll have to experiment with other flavours and different cooking options. Apparently some rice cookers have an actual cake setting, but mine just has several different types of rice, and one for okayu. I just used the basic rice setting a few times for this, but I might try the okayu setting next time since it’s the one non-rice option. I also might try icing next time, but I didn’t want to today because I managed to catch a cold so I haven’t been feeling too good (I made the cake wearing a mask, and washing my hands with soap regularly).

My copy of FFXIII shipped this morning. I’m not sure if I’ll get it tomorrow or Friday because I have classes almost all day tomorrow. I’ll check back during my lunch break to see if it turned up in the morning and if so I’ll be able to arrange for it to be redelivered in the evening, but otherwise I’ll have to wait until Friday morning because my classes don’t end until six, at which point it will be too late to arrange a redelivery. Either way, I’ll be trying it out before the end of the week!