You see, the Japanese don't believe in ovens. And much like fairies, ovens everywhere fall down dead when a large concentration of people steadfastly refuse to believe in them. It's very sad.
Because of the ethereal oven-death-zone which encases this country, Japanese microwaves have evolved to partially fill the niche of those fantasmagorical kitchen appliances which, legend has it, sometimes fit entire turkeys AND the side dishes in the same compartment. However, microwaves with baking functions are of course still microwave-sized. Thus it took me pretty much all afternoon to bake about four dozen three-quarters-sized cookies in my little microven (alternately, "ovrowave") on my wee-tiny dollar store cookie sheets which I held onto with wee-tiny polka-dotted dollar store hot pads. If only my feet had sprouted hair and my apartment building had shrunk and become partially encassed in the grassy hillside, I would have made a pretty fine hobbit on Sunday afternoon.
Here are the results of the first batch, which were undercooked by about one minute and 10 degrees Celsius, and which scrunched up like wet paper towels when I tried to remove them from the sheets:
And here is a good sample of the subsequent batches, which turned out just wonderfully and were very much appreciated by my co-workers today at lunchtime:
I also took a couple action-shots of the cookies in the nuker, just so's I could prove it to you all that everything I have said about Japan, ovens, and fairies is completely true:
On a somewhat perplexing note, the dough didn't smell at all like the cookie-dough I would make with my mum back in the States. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe it was the butter I used, or the eggs, or the flour, or the brown sugar, but something about that dough just smelled overwhelmingly Japanese to me. Only people who have eaten authentic Japanese food for any amount of time over two weeks will really understand what I mean by that, but I guess one of the subtle differences is that despite having a crap-ton of sugar and chocolate bits in it, the dough didn't smell sweet. Neither did it smell flour-y. I think it smelt of egg and oils mostly, which may be a function of the astronomically lower level of preservatives in everything out here in the countryside. Perhaps the natural odors of the raw foodstuffs come through more strongly without them? I don't pretend to understand food chemistry at all, so that's just a shot in the dark. Anyway, eerie foreignness of smell aside, I would say that this endeavour was a resounding success. And my fellow teachers agree. I just hope I haven't set too high a bar for myself on baked goods to pass around the office.
