Look Ma, No Oven!

About author / Pamela Chester

Mom of two; graduate French Culinary Institute; kids cooking program instructor; Master's degree in food studies. Creates kid friendly foods and loves her slow cooker.

One of my favorite activities at home is baking. It’s twice as much fun when you get your kids involved, and a good learning experience for them. However, I have a small issue right now that might get in the way of baking some yummy fall goodies -- no oven! As our kitchen renovation continues, I find I need to come up with even more innovative ways to cook without a kitchen. As a follow up to last week’s column, where I talked about some simple ideas for cooking without a kitchen, this week I’d like to turn to the subject of baking without an oven.

I’ve always been fascinated with baking since I was a little kid. My sister and I would spend hours poring over the Betty Crocker cookie cookbook in the hopes that we could produce some of the beautiful cookies within its pages ourselves. We had one small obstacle in our way though: we were forbidden to use the oven. So our cookie baking was relegated to the holiday season, the only time my mom, who prefers cooking to baking (she is an excellent cook), would get the urge to bake lots of cookies.

But there was a whole realm of cookie making that we could do: the No-Bake cookie. I remember getting the recipes out of a kids magazine or off the back of cereal boxes and we would spend the afternoon making up homemade goodies. The no-bake cookies I made as a kid were usually concoctions involving cereal, marshmallows, and chocolate. The most classic no-bake cookie is the Rice Krispie treat. The homemade ones are a world apart from the familiar prepackaged ones you see all the time, especially when they are still warm.

It's a fun way to help your kids learn to prepare sweet treats from scratch. No bake cookies are safe for kids to make with minimal adult supervision. There may be a few simple procedures that need to be done on the stovetop or in the microwave, such as melting butter, so your kids need to be old enough to exercise proper food safety precautions. Also, they should know never to lick a spoon that has hot syrup on it, no matter how tempting. If your kids are old enough to use the microwave and know how to clean up after themselves, then they can make their own sweet treats without coming near the oven. No worrying that someone will burn their fingers on a hot cookie tray, or forget to turn the oven off.

For the recipe below, we turn to our Canadians friends up North. The Nanaimo Bar is from the British Columbian city of that name and is a classic no bake cookie involving layers of crushed wafer cookies, custard or icing, and chocolate. It was invented in the 1950s and came to be known as Canada's national confection. They are so simple to make, and they freeze well. Your kids will be begging to make them all the time!

Serves/Makes: 25 bars

***Bottom layer***

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons chocolate syrup
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 5 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup egg substitute
• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 cup finely chopped almonds (optional)
• 1 cup flaked sweetened coconut

***Second layer***

• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup fat-free sour cream
• 3 tablespoons half and half
• 1/4 cup instant french vanilla pudding mix
• 2 cups powdered sugar

***Third layer***

• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 tablespoons half and half