Yes, You Can Make Brownies In A Toaster Oven

Oven toasters are the under-appreciated small kitchen appliance in many kitchens. Often, its only function is to toast bread, whether it's a slice of bread, a tall pandesal, or a chunky dinner roll. It's the appliance many also turn to when they have to reheat a small piece of food since it heats up fast and does the job well. 

You can even make oven toaster cookies, "bake" puto, bake brownies, and even make a complete meal in an oven toaster! You just need to know a few tips and tricks to make sure your food is cooked right.

Need a quick and Easy Brownie Recipe for 2? Here's a quick recipe to throw together and try in your toaster oven: 

1. 1. Melt 1/4 cup unsalted butter together with 1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder in a medium saucepan. Cook, stirring, until the cocoa powder is aromatic. Remove from the heat. 
2. 2. Stir in 1/2 cup sugar. (This will help the butter cool slightly.) Add and whisk in 1 large egg followed by 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. 
3. 3. Sift then stir in 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour. Stir in 1/4 up to 1/2 cup walnuts, chopped, if you want to make a walnut brownie. 
4. 4. Transfer brownie batter into a parchment-lined 4-inch square baking pan or any pan that fits in your oven toaster. Toast for 15 minutes or until the edges are set and the center is still soft. 
5. 5. Let cool completely in the pan before lifting out of the pan and slicing into four 2-inch squares. 

Now that you have a recipe that's fit for a toaster oven, you might need a few of these tips to make sure that the brownies emerge as perfectly as it can from the oven toaster as it would in a full-sized oven: 

1 Use a baking pan that fits. 

Most oven toasters come with a tray but no baking pan. You'll have to find and buy one that fits in your oven. One trick that you can do is measure the inside of the oven. How deep is it? How high is it from the rack to the heating element on top? By knowing this, you can determine how wide and how tall your baking pan can be. 

• READ THESE: MORE ARTICLES ON BAKING PANS
• How To Use Different Baking Pans
  
• What You Should Look For In Baking Pans

2 Line your baking pan. 

Just like a traditional brownie recipe, you will want to line your baking pan with parchment paper. This eliminates the need for scraping the brownies off the bottom of the pan when it's done. Whether it's a cakey brownie you want or a fudgy one, it will stick. Be safer than sorry and lightly grease then line your baking pan. 

3 Be aware of the heat and adjust the baking time. 

Many oven toasters just have one setting: a timer dial. This means you cannot tweak the heat setting or even toggle the top and bottom heating rods. That's why you have to be aware of the heat and how hot it can get inside.

This means baking time may vary drastically. You need to check your brownies at the 5-minute mark and then check it again according to how "done" it was at that time. It may take 15 minutes but without an oven thermometer to tell you how hot it is inside, you'll have to wing it.

To do that, after baking for 5 minutes, observe the edges, and then take a toothpick and poke its center. If the toothpick and the edges are both still wet, continue baking for another 5 minutes. If it's got crumbs and the edges are dry, take it out already. If it's wet with a crumb or two and edges that are almost set, give it another 3 minutes before checking again. You're looking for set edges and an almost set center before removing the brownies from the oven toaster.

It's okay to be paranoid the first time you bake something in your oven toaster. This is good, so that the next time, you're more familiar with your appliance and can try any of these recipes, too: 

See Also

Recipe

Toaster Oven Chocolate Cookies Recipe

Aug 18, 2016

Recipe

Cheesy Baked Salmon Recipe

Oct 30, 2017

Recipe

Baked Garlic Chicken Recipe

Nov 7, 2017

Recipe

Strawberry S'mores Recipe

Nov 1, 2017

Now that you know how to successfully make brownies in your oven toaster, why not try using it for toasting nuts and spices, toasting bread crumbs, and making melted or even "grilled" cheese sandwiches instead of doing these tasks on the stovetop? What's great about the oven toaster is there is no hovering involved compared to the stove where you will need to regularly stir to prevent the food from burning. In an oven toaster, you get more even heat, requiring you to gently shake the pan or flip the bread occasionally until it's toasted as you desire. 

It's not just the oven toaster's small size that makes it ideal for small kitchens. Its quick heating and overall hot-enough-to-burn temperature make the oven toaster best suited for small kitchen tasks, too, like making a perfectly sized dessert for two, too.  

ALSO READ: 

See Also

Baking

KITCHEN TRICKS: You Can Make Puto In A Toaster Oven

Feb 7, 2020

Cooking

You Can Make These Dishes In a Toaster Oven in 30 Minutes or Less!

Sep 28, 2018

Baking

Everything You Need To Know About Toaster Ovens

Dec 15, 2019

***

Thinking about what to cook next? Join our Facebook group, Yummy Pinoy Cooking Club, to get more recipe ideas, share your own dishes, and find out what the rest of the community are making and eating!

Got your own version of the classic dishes? Pa-share naman! Get your recipe published on Yummy.ph by submitting your recipe here!