Is It Possible To Bake A Cake In A Rice Cooker?

Rice cookers are some of the most magical appliances. They make plump, perfect rice every time (provided you wash the rice first), but there's more: people have found genius alternative uses for them, like making complete meals, hard-boiled eggs, and even oatmeal. But if you have a modern rice cooker, you might have noticed a weird setting on it: Cake. While not quite as weird as stove cake, it sounds kind of ludicrous. Can you actually make a cake in a rice cooker, and will it turn out all right?

Yes, you can bake a cake in a rice cooker, and you can do it even if your particular rice cooker doesn't have a cake setting. You can bake from a box mix, with any additional ingredients that it calls for, or you can actually make it from scratch, if you want. While not preferable to an oven, the rice cooker method is great if you don't have access to one, don't want to turn on your oven (during a heatwave, for example), or if you just want to try something fun and different with your rice cooker. In addition to regular cakes, the rice cooker is particularly suited to making Japanese sponge cakes.

Since most rice cooker bowls are already nonstick, you don't have to spray them; however, if your bowl has seen better days and is scratched up, you might want to give it a few shots of cooking spray. Your rice cooker might come with a cake setting, and if so, you're pretty much good to go — just put the ingredients in, choose that setting, and let it do its thing.

If your rice cooker doesn't have a cake function, then listen up. Every rice cooker is different, and yours will likely turn from cook to warm before the cake is done baking. If this happens, just continuously flick the setting to cook until your cake finishes. Or your cake might need more than one cooking cycle to set up. In fact, it might need more like two to three cooks, so you can just restart it. While it might not sing when it's finished, you can always do the toothpick check to make sure your cake is done.

If you opt to let it cool in the bowl, you do run the risk of your cake overcooking; it's best to remove the bowl (be careful, it'll be hot) and flip it over a metal cooling rack so that the air can reach every part of the cake and it won't get mushy.