The oven is self-cleaning, but don't believe that. There is always grease and grime left after the self-cleaning and, besides, the racks had to be cleaned separately. Apparently, the self-cleaning destroys the finish on them. After an entire day self-cleaning and, elbow greasing the oven, and using Easy-off to clean the racks, the oven looked brand, spanking new. There was no way this oven was ever going to be used again until the house is sold. I'd just have to find another way to cook.
So...the next day I went shopping for a solution. I found it in a counter top Hamilton Beach counter oven. This spiffy little number can bake and broil, be used as a convection oven, and has a rotisserie to cook a small chicken. That night, after setting up the oven, I tested it by broiling some chicken breasts. They turned out wonderfully--nice and juicy with just a bit of crispness around the edges—just the way I like them.
Later that week, I wanted to make some Snickerdoodle cookies. I whipped up a batch and placed them in the oven at 350 degrees (like the recipe suggested) for 10-12 minutes. After 10 minutes, the tops were nice and browned so I took them out of the oven. They smelled heavenly. Unfortunately, after letting them sit on the cooling rack for the suggested minute, I spatula ed them off the sheet. The cookies looked odd when I placed them onto a plate. The top was nicely baked but the bottom was almost raw, and the cookies were very thin. I put cookie sheet after cookie sheet into the oven to bake and they all came out the same way. After cooking the cookies tasted fine but unusual in texture. The top was nice and crispy but the bottom was chewy. We ate them anyway—they were edible just odd looking.
I wondered then if there was something wrong with the oven but the chicken had turned out great. The only explanation is that maybe I had done something wrong with the recipe. I had not used stick margarine, as the recipe said to do, I used tub margarine which doesn't have as much fat content. Maybe that's why they didn't turn out.
On Friday, I wanted to make some oven-baked french fries to accompany the the flounder I pan seared. When I set the temperature, my eye was drawn to the selection knob for the type of cooking I wanted to do. As soon as I noticed where the indicator was on the knob, I knew what happened to the cookies! The knob was still on broil from when the chicken breasts were broiled! The cookies had been broiled not baked. How could I have been so stupid as to not check the selection knob?
Yesterday, I make another batch of Snickerdoodles using stick margarine and, to my relief, they turned out just they way they have all the other times I baked them—with that one exception when I broiled them! Ted just smiled and said the new batch tasted almost as good as the previous one but not as chewy.
