My little electric oven with burners on top in our basement. Along with the utility sink, an old refrigerator and my little table and chairs I has a good thing going. My little sister was the waiter, and we did cakes, tiny hamburgers and frozen chocolate milk for the neighborhood friends.
What a fun and funny thread! I'm still laughing about Sam's imaginings re: boys making bearnaise.
Can't say I had any cooking-related toys; maybe some tiny cake tins but not sure. But we did make Sunday brunches for mother on her birthday or Mother's Day using the real oven.
Then again there was the time we almost set the house on fire in a non-food related stove incident. We'd learned to make "invisible ink" using either lemon juice or sugar water. You place the paper over the flame, at a distance, and the warmth makes the script appear. We put the paper too close to the flame and it caught fire--my mother was not home. Fortunately we got it put out in time.
A child's baking set with loaf and pie pans as well as an angel food cake pan, with rolling pin with red handles, muffin tin, wooden spoons and hand roto mixer
Me too!!! Except it got taken away when I started a smolder of sorts. My mon told me she wouldn't buy new mixes until a certain amount of time passed and that I shouldn't use up all the mixes at once. Well of course I did! I made a mini cake smorgasbord! My mom wouldn't back down on the no new mixes thing so I had to "use my imagination." so I pretended to make cakes using plastic doll dishes... Which melted and smoked a lot. And that was the end of the EZ Bake Oven until 2002 when one of my besties got me one for Christmas. Loves it. Do they still make EZ Bake Ovens and how will they work when the old lightbulbs get phased out?!
I did a shallow Google search on the 'light bulb' question. Apparently, they've designed the new oven to not use the bulbs. Plus..IMHO, I think the new design with the pink/purple colors really look bad. The classic one posted above looked far cooler. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/09/easy-bake-oven-loses-light-bulb-gets-20-makeover/
I LOVED my easy-bake oven. (and still do!) As an adult I purchased David Hoffman's Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet - a history of the toy, as well as a collection of recipes written by prominent chefs tailored to the easy-bakes specifications. Its so much fun to make these "grown-up" dishes with my niece in her own little oven
Chef Lisa - I bought my daughter cook-books from the time she could look at pictures and read. She is an excellent cook and when I was helping her move last week saw that she kept all those books! Thanks for reminding us about the importance of books.
The closest thing I had to a food related toy was a series of Pez dispensers. My mother got me involved in real cooking when I was between the ages of 6 and 7...right around the time I quit smoking.
For contemporary adult children the new EZ Bake oven would have to be the Babycakes series of appliances which are really cheap and incredibly popular. I have no intention of owning one.
Oh, I'm reminded of this one from one of my favorite websites. BoingBoing.
A candy sushi kit for kids. http://boingboing.net/2011/03/21/candy-sushi-kit.htmlit incorporates 'modernist' stuff. (making gells/chemistry) with presentation to make 'sushi' like candy. Never had it or tried it...the link shows sources and english instructions.
http://boingboing.net/2011/03/21/candy-sushi-kit.html
I just reviewed the video. It even incorporates "Modernist" specification to make little spheres of candy 'fish eggs'.
Another link for the cheap kit. http://whiterabbitexpress.com/popin-cookin/
That really looks like fun. Even to me as adult.
There was a 'toy' oven in our dark and dingy basement, for my younger sister and me. I don't think we cooked anything after the first run, but my sister got into making candles. Mostly she would melt wax and pour it into cold water and it would make cool shapes like a frozen waterfall upside down. We moved out of that house when she was in 5th grade, and the oven didn't move with us. I think it was on/off, no heat control, electric, and I don't remember any supervision. She moved on to copper enameling, and I was too busy reading to get involved in cooking. So much for teaching with toys. I think the mothers who let their children cook with the real thing did it right -- my 3 sons are all good cooks now, all very involved from a young age.
We did have a Mr. Frosty as kids -- I haven't thought about that in years! Thanks, Sam.
My Dad wouldn't let me have a EZ-Bake oven because he thought it would turn me gay. So, I got GI Joes and BB guns. Now, I still cook and my partner is a Former Marine. It's all good tho.
Ahh..no. The EZ bake was kinda cool. But I think the new ones require the 100W lightblubs.
And to expand on cooking and guys cooking. With the Competition cooking shows on today, I fully expect the other swing in culture---where a Dad is encouraging their sons to cook and getting really over possessive about it;
You Call THIS A Béarnaise SAUCE? DIDN"T I TEACH YOU ANYTHING, SON?
What a difference a generation makes. Now I insist that my boys learn to cook. I read Nigel Slater's "Toast" aloud to them at 11 and 14 (ok so I edited out the part where he was a bit promiscuous). And I am so not worried about influencing their sexual orientation. Whatever they are/become is fine with me!
I never had any cooking toys, but my mother let me use any and every tool in her kitchen from a very early age. (I'm not sure when she got her first hand mixer, but I doubt I used that before I was about 10 or 11.) We were encouraged to bake/cook anything we wanted, whenever and as often as we chose to, as long as we cleaned up afterwards. I started baking a lot when I was about 8 or 9, and didn't stop, as in I baked something really tasty about five times a week, until I went away to college. And I still always feel responsible for all dishes, utensil, pots and pans used in anything I cook. I feel quite lucky. ;o)
I broke out my Mr Frosty and used Amanda's simple syrup with steeped ginger. Basically, a cup of water a 1/2 cup of sliced ginger, 1/2 cup of sugar boiled and simmered. Drained put in a squeeze bottle to use for tea/soda...and SNOW CONE!
An electric kid-friendly cupcake maker comes to mind for a "modern food toy." My friend bought it off an infommercial for her 8 yo for x-mas but think you can find itr bed, bath & beyond. I think its cool that they hae personalized aprons, chef hats and uniform for kids, and kid-sized cooking utensils.
No, My original was tossed ages ago. I got a ebay one quite awhile ago. That's not my pic either. (g).
But it still works. Hummm..I might think of some other uses for it..maybe when basil is fresh a ice cube with basil/lemon/ginger ground into 'snow' for a sorbet? Mr. Frosty, I"m Looking at you Now for Springtime.
I loved my play kitchen, which had a cooktop, oven, refrigerator, dishwasher and plastic food. It was a sad day when my two older brothers, pretending to be terrorists, attacked it with BB guns. I can still see the pock marks in the tin, the shattered plastic oven window. I cried for days.
When I was a child, I had a Betty Crocker electric stove/oven that came with its own little cake mixes. Not much of a cake eater since then. So when I had my daughter we didn't do toys we did real cooking and today she is a pastry chef. That being said, do the Pez candy things count? I loved, loved them.
34 Comments
Can't say I had any cooking-related toys; maybe some tiny cake tins but not sure. But we did make Sunday brunches for mother on her birthday or Mother's Day using the real oven.
Then again there was the time we almost set the house on fire in a non-food related stove incident. We'd learned to make "invisible ink" using either lemon juice or sugar water. You place the paper over the flame, at a distance, and the warmth makes the script appear. We put the paper too close to the flame and it caught fire--my mother was not home. Fortunately we got it put out in time.
For contemporary adult children the new EZ Bake oven would have to be the Babycakes series of appliances which are really cheap and incredibly popular. I have no intention of owning one.
A candy sushi kit for kids. http://boingboing.net/2011/03/21/candy-sushi-kit.htmlit incorporates 'modernist' stuff. (making gells/chemistry) with presentation to make 'sushi' like candy. Never had it or tried it...the link shows sources and english instructions.
http://boingboing.net/2011/03/21/candy-sushi-kit.html
I just reviewed the video. It even incorporates "Modernist" specification to make little spheres of candy 'fish eggs'.
Another link for the cheap kit. http://whiterabbitexpress.com/popin-cookin/
That really looks like fun. Even to me as adult.
We did have a Mr. Frosty as kids -- I haven't thought about that in years! Thanks, Sam.
Voted the Best Reply!
And to expand on cooking and guys cooking. With the Competition cooking shows on today, I fully expect the other swing in culture---where a Dad is encouraging their sons to cook and getting really over possessive about it;
You Call THIS A Béarnaise SAUCE? DIDN"T I TEACH YOU ANYTHING, SON?
But it still works. Hummm..I might think of some other uses for it..maybe when basil is fresh a ice cube with basil/lemon/ginger ground into 'snow' for a sorbet? Mr. Frosty, I"m Looking at you Now for Springtime.