By Fiona Jenkins

No oven? No worries! This simple recipe for rice-cooker cake can be adapted in many ways. It is perfect for birthdays.

INGREDIENTS:

For the cake:

• One 200 grams packet of “hot cake” pancake mix
• 1 egg
• 140 ml milk
• Other ingredients you like – for example, walnuts, sultanas, chocolate chips

For simple butter cream icing:

• 50 grams butter (softened)
• About 100 grams powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS:

For the cake:

• Whisk the pancake mix, egg and milk together.
• Add your other ingredients and stir.
• Grease rice pot.
• Pour in cake mix.
• My rice cooker is very basic – the only buttons are “on” and “off” and “keep warm.” To make a cake in my cooker I press cook twice and each time takes about 40 minutes. Experiment with your own rice cooker!

For the simple butter cream icing:

• Add powdered sugar to the butter until it looks feels thick and grainy and tastes good! Add flavouring or colouring if you wish.
• Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.
• Slice it in half and fill with anko, chocolate spread, jam or icing.
• Replace the top half and ice.

If you are making a birthday cake, look in your local supermarket for candles, decorations and squeezy tubes of icing for writing.

Joshua Zimmerman

Josh is a former Hiroshima JET ALT who now lives in Wisconsin. When he isn't maintaining the WIV webpage he can be found tinkering with his own blog, going to grad school, SCUBA diving, and getting on people's nerves.