Crisis! Alert!
Jennifer Flaten

Crisis alert! Crisis alert!

I don’t mean the international debt crisis, silly. I am writing about a something more important, so grab hold of something solid, here comes some very bad news. I write of a crisis of outstanding proportions.

Hmm, think I could fit the word crisis in one more time? I probably could, but I suspect you would throw rotten fruit at your screen. Anyway, back to the crisis at hand, ha, got one last one in, he Easy Bake Oven is doomed. Yes, I am referring to the little plastic oven that bakes cakes with a light bulb.

I just learned that the oven is collateral damage in the government war against light bulbs or freewill, whichever. How can I consider that important? It involves snack food and as you know that is much, much more important than anything else.

Due to the government’s desire to control every aspect of our lives, we are now required to use a certain kind of light bulb. The kind that cannot, I repeat cannot, cook a tiny cake in a plastic oven. They, yes the royal they, believe that standard light bulbs are the spawn of an energy wasting Satan regardless of their ability to make tasty snack cakes and they’ve banished them.

Now, millions of little nascent bakers won’t know the joy of making wafer thin cakes in an oven that resembles a shoebox, oh, won’t someone please think of the children, sorry, just couldn’t help myself. I’ve always wanted to say that.

Actually, that’s not true. There will still be an Easy Bake oven, but instead of a light bulb, the oven will have a tiny heating element. Gosh, a heating element, plastic and children; what could possibly go wrong?

I am sure the new oven, what with its fancy heating element, will run circles around the old ovens. As you can imagine the cost of an Easy Bake oven is on a jet-propelled ride from affordable to, “Are you kidding me that much for something my kid will play with once.” How do I know they will only play with it once? Well, because as a kid, I had one and yes, I played with it just once.

I can‘t lie, it was more than once. With my love of cake and frosting-don‘t forget the frosting, how could I pass up an opportunity to make an unlimited supply of my own personal cakes?  Never mind that the cakes never, ever came out of the pan whole and were so thin you could see through them, I still loved them. I just plopped on an enormous amount of frosting to disguise the holes.

Come to think of it, you could use that with just about any mishap in the kitchen. Burn the roast? Cover it with frosting, over salt the potatoes? Add some frosting.

Back to the oven, I played with it until I ran out of the mixes, at which point my parents declined to spend money on special easy bake oven mixes. I attempted to use a Jiffy cake mix in the oven. Do I even need to tell you how that turned out? Not well, as I am sure you have guessed. 

I had a large chocolate blob oozing out of my Easy Bake. After that my parents loudly and forcefully, err, I mean respectfully, requested I never Easy Bake again.