Welcome to my Tiny Kitchen. I'd bring you inside but…well.. it's tiny. The internet is just a bit bigger, so welcome to the blog!

Break out the hot plates and minimize your elbow room, because this one is for those navigators of the nanoscale, the musketeers of mini, the trekkers of tiny, the-you get the idea. Anybody who has lived in a college dorm, a city flat, or a one person apartment that's actually fitting four knows that kitchen room can be as precious as that last donut or uninterrupted streaming (you see where my priorities lie right?) Throughout my years foraging in the world of hot plates and stacked kitchenware, I've picked up a few tips, though I'm still learning as I go.
The kitchen can be a pretty terrifying place if you've just moved out, whether it be across the country to school or across the street, or anywhere really. I'm not going to lie, I feasted on many a microwavable Kraft mac and cheese bowl (mmm cheese product) before venturing into the communal kitchen of my freshman dorm.
The first thing I did make was a panic recipe. Do you know those or did I just make that term up? I think I just made that up. Anyway, a panic recipe is for when you make something in a rush at the last minute. For example, when you sign up for a bake off, forget about it, and realize that you have 45 minutes to make something with whatever you stuffed in your dresser when you moved in. I had shake and pour pancake mix, chocolate chips, vegetable oil, and 10 Oreos from a very kind next door neighbor. First Pro Tip for you freshmen out there, the people on your dorm floor are probably just as nervous as you about meeting the people they have to share a bathroom and wifi with. A friendly knock can bring about a lifelong bond, or you know, get you some Oreos.
Anywho, so I have these lovely ingredients and 30 minutes. I managed to paw through my as yet unpacked box of supplies (which mostly stayed that way throughout the year, holla for lazy organizers) and pull out a pot as well as a cupcake tin. Victory! Now to bake something. I scurried to my kitchen and was met with a tired looking stove and an oven that was having a mid life crisis without the shiny sportscar. In a hasty daze of desperation, I decided to make brownies. And in order to melt the chocolate chips, I figured, a pot, some oil, it'd be perfect. When they melted they kind of looked like that the tar pit from those history channel shows where they recreate a mammoth being devoured by sludge. Delicious description, no? Unfortunately with my dwindling amount of supplies I had to use them, tar or not. Then in a burst of inspiration that can only come from having 20 minutes until you disappoint the first few friends you've made, I crushed up Oreos, added the half melted chips, added pancake batter, put it in the oven and waiting with excruciating patience. Now this oven had no viewing window so every two minutes I would spastically open the oven in the hopes that a pastry worthy of Cupcake Wars had materialized. Shockingly this method produced a reasonable facsimile of a brownie in 15 minutes, giving me 5 minutes to burn my fingers taking them out and running the three minutes to the bake off. Where I told everyone that I had used pancake batter on purpose to up the creativity. I'm pretty sure no one bought it but I think the effort was appreciated. I didn't taste them before I put the plate out (not recommended by the way) but the reviews weren't bad and at the end when I took a bite of what could nicely be classified as brownies on an acid trip, they tasted like chocolate Oreo pancake bites. Not terrible.
After that, I realized that limitations in the kitchen could really lead to creative solutions. I mean, an Oreo brownie is not the worst thing in the world. After awhile I tried the recipe again with a few tweaks and without micro managing the oven, what I got was essentially Oreo Stuffed Brownies. I'd like to think of it as a life lesson. Is that stretching it too far? Ah well, call me Mr. Fantastic then. Sometimes life gives you a tiny kitchen, but it's a kitchen and food will inevitably come from it. Good food, even. It's really just perspective and hey, the tinier the kitchen, the more you can see, the better your perspective. Maybe? Does that work?
And if life gives you Oreos and pancake batter make Oreo Stuffed Brownies. Or Oreo pancakes. That sounds delicious actually, I'm going to go do that.

Until next time, Think Deliciously,

J