Basic Recipe for Cake With A Rice cooker

As you now know, I do not have a "real" oven in my Japanese kitchen. But - and you know that too - I will not give up the idea of ​making cakes or bread! After testing the rolls in the microwave and oven toaster, here is the story of cakes rice cooker. Yes, yes, I assure you. Here is the gear :

A rice cooker whose main function - wait for it - is to cook rice. But the peculiarity of this instrument is that it is intelligent (it does not seem at first sight, but if), that is to say, that it reacts to the quantity of liquid it contains (the rice is cooked when there is no water). Hence the idea of making cakes in it: the cake will be cooked when the dough is no longer wet! Do you find that foolish? Not me! Moreover, to confirm this idea I went for a walk on the Japanese Google, typing "rice cooker" and "cake" in Japanese, and I found a site full of recipes for cakes rice cooker.

My Japanese friends were outraged: "the rice cooker is made to cook rice! ". Sacrilege, what?

I do not care! I will still try!

Cakes of small size, certainly, but well inflated and even a little gilded on the top. The consistency is sometimes a little spongy (close to the "rag cake"), sometimes you think it's baked, other times you swear it's a semolina cake ... The result is often good and always surprising.

Here is the recipe on the basis of which multiple variants are possible (change the fruits, put chocolate chips, coconut, dried fruits ...)

A basic recipe for a cake with  Xiaomi rice cooker

- 65g of flour

- 1 packet of baking powder

- cinnamon

- 50g of brown sugar

- 1 egg

- milk (with the egg you get 80ml of total liquid)

- an apple cut into small pieces

Mix the dry ingredients on one side and the liquid ingredients on the other, then add the liquid to the dry by making a well. Mix well and add the apple quarters.

Pour into the bowl of the previously buttered Xiaomi rice cooker, close the lid of the Xiaomi rice cooker and switch on. When the cooker rings, check the cooking, and if not cook a little more until the tip of the knife comes out dry. Let cool 5 minutes before unmolding.

Mind you, ever since I started baking cakes inside, my Xiaomi rice cooker makes a weird sound and a lot, a lot of steam when we just ask him to cook some rice ... So I'm I was a little upset with cake batter and the poor do not understand what is happening to him, or he is not happy when I only ask him to cook rice since he has now proved to me that he knew how to do much better ... The investigation continues.

In the meantime, my skeptical Japanese friends on the diversion of the rice cooker for pastry purposes have found my cakes very good (the Japanese are very polite, all in all). However, it would surprise me that they risk it: "The rice cooker is still made to cook rice! "

I would have tried ...

Since my Japanese adventures, I have persevered in making cakes in rice cookers, and it still works as well. My rice cooker is a delirium of the brand SEB.