Wanda the Wonder Oven

At my first meeting with my advisor during my freshman year of college, I remember being asked what I found to be the most difficult transition in adjusting to college life.  I'm fairly sure my answer had something to do with not having my own oven (isn't that everyone's toughest adjustment?).  Oh, sure, there was a kitchen in the basement of the dorm, but it had just one stove and one oven for all the hundreds of residents of the building.  And besides, the one time I tried to use it to make brownies for my roommate's birthday, the oven got way hotter than the dial indicated, simultaneously burning the brownies while leaving them raw inside - not exactly encouraging results.

But then, some time around January, I got to know Kate, and in between the myriad musicals we watched together, she introduced me to her toaster oven.  Growing up, my family had a regular toaster, never a toaster oven; I'd heard of them, but never thought of owning one.  Kate, on the other hand, knew their worth and had bought one in preparation for college so that she might never face the ignominy of being struck with a desire to bake but having no means to do so.  With Kate's wise guidance, I discovered that a toaster oven could bake anything - anything!- a regular oven could, provided it wasn't too big or tall.  After several baking-deprived months, that was quite the discovery.

You might suggest that, armed with this new information, I could get myself a toaster oven and solve my problem.  Unfortunately, toaster ovens - or, really, any food-heating-device - were illegal in my dorm (in fact, our contraband microwave got confiscated when accidentally left in plain sight during spring break room checks).  And besides, I'd rather invite myself over to Kate's room and bake cookies with her than do it isolated and lonely in my own room.  Luckily, being very accommodating (and very interested in eating more baked goods), Kate happily obliged.

I had even easier access to Kate's toaster oven when she and I lived together our sophomore year.  By our junior and senior years, we graduated to a real apartment, complete with full kitchen and full-sized stove, but the toaster oven came along, too.  I don't know what Kate paid for the toaster oven - maybe $20.  It wasn't a particularly fancy one.  But oh, could it bake.  It got so much action that eventually I decided it needed a name, and was subsequently christened Wanda the Wonder Oven.*  Let me tell you, she was a wonder indeed.

Back then, I would say I was something of a simple baker.  Oh, sure, Wanda and I made the occasional round of birthday cheesecake cupcakes, and once in a while a few (miniature) loaves of bread, and maybe a pie or two with fruit surreptitiously squirreled out of the dining hall in pockets and Styrofoam coffee cups.  But mostly, when I think about that first year of baking in a toaster oven, I think about two things: muffins and cookies.  I'll come back to muffins soon enough, but for now, let's focus on the important part: the cookies.

I managed to amass quite a pile of cookie recipes during college.  I think there was a while there when, each Christmas, my mom gave me a new cook book filled entirely with cookie recipes.  And luckily, since I was on the swim team and training 20 hours a week, I could make my weekly batches of cookies and manage to not gain the dreaded freshman fifteen (or, let's be honest, probably more like fifty).  Wanda and I must have baked hundreds and hundreds of cookies in our years together.  Sure, she wasn't too fast, only able to fit six or eight cookies at a time, but that just made for a longer supply of fresh-from-the-oven warm cookies, and what could be wrong with that?

One of my favorite recipes that I collected is for cinnamon cookies.  I suppose that oughtn't to be a surprise; I'm something of a cinnamon freak.  I'm told that, when I was a baby, I loved eating cinnamon plain from the tray of my high chair.  The surprisingly spicy powder burned my face, but that was beside the point; it was cinnamon, and a little face burn wasn't going to discourage me.  But not to worry if you're not quite the cinnamon aficionado that I am - these are well-rounded and soul-warming and entirely unlikely to burn your face - unless, of course, you use the hot-from-the-oven tray as a pillow (I don't recommend that, by the way).  They're simple enough: just eight ingredients, but they are so much more than the sum of their parts.  I may or may not have scarfed down four as soon as they came out of the oven when I made them again last week - and this at a time when I swim way less than I did in my college cookie glory days.

Eventually, after about five years of hard use, Wanda had had enough and had to be retired.  But when I bake the kinds of things that she and I made together so often, I send a toast her way.  So I'd like to dedicate this post to Wanda, with love.  And milk and cookies.

*Sadly, I don't believe I have a single photo of Wanda.  Luckily, though, she appeared in a photo essay published about the new dorm I lived in my sophomore year - isn't she glamorous?

Cinnamon cookies

1 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1/2 cup (4 ounces, or 1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
cinnamon sugar for rolling


In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.  Set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined.  With a wooden spoon, mix in the dry ingredients until just combined.  Cover the dough and let chill for 30 minutes.

While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and create the cinnamon sugar mix in a shallow bowl by stirring together about 3 tablespoons of sugar with a teaspoon of cinnamon.

When the dough has chilled, shape the cookies: roll about a tablespoon of dough into a ball in your palms, then roll the dough in the cinnamon sugar.  Place cookies 2 inches apart on the baking sheet - they will spread a lot in the oven.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until just turning golden brown around the edges.  The middles may look a little underdone, but they will continue to cook as they cool.  Let cool for 5-10 minutes on the baking sheet, then set to dry on racks or on parchment paper.

Makes about 20 2-inch diameter cookies