…make no-bake cookies and a gigantic box space ship. At least, that’s what we did.

Two weeks ago, I mixed up a batch of coffee cake from a new recipe (which was delicious, but sadly in the kerfuffle I lost closed the tab with the recipe, alas). I turned on our oven and it made the usual gas burning sound. When I put the cake into the oven, it didn’t feel particularly hot. I figured, “It’s only 350; that’s why.” Not that I’d hang out in a 350-degree oven, or anything, but in the scheme of baking it’s just normal.

Well, 40 minutes later, I checked on the coffee cake and found it entirely batter still. I mean, it actually still sloshed when I moved it. A quick phone call to Mom confirmed that her oven was available. Benji and I zipped over there, still wearing our pajamas.

Well, actually, zip doesn’t describe it so well as delicately minced along. The drive proved surprisingly harrowing, with a very full pan of liquid sloshing first one way and then another as we traversed the innumerable up-and-down hills between our house and my parents’ house. I spent a good portion of the drive leaned over, trying to level the pan while still seeing out the windshield well enough to drive. Good thing I didn’t get pulled over.

Anyway, Mom had neglected to mention she had guests arriving within 30 minutes of our starting the 40-minute bake of our coffee cake. Needless to say, I might have chosen to wear regular clothes and brush my hair if I’d known that.

While Benji and I baked the cake, Ian researched new ovens. We easily chose to replace our old one, which had previously broken once already. When the repair man fixed it at the time, maybe two years ago, he mentioned that parts weren’t available because the oven was too old. On the bright side, he said, it was so low-bidder that the control panel was extremely simple. So simple that the repair man simply rewired the control panel so our “bake” setting worked. We agreed at the time that, if the oven broke again, we would retire it for good.

Armed with Ian’s research, during nap time Dad and I went to Albert Lee and looked at ovens. We found one that got good Consumer Reports ratings, and (only briefly distracted by the $4200 Wolf range) ordered it. They scheduled delivery for November 17, 10 days later; but said we needed to find someone else to install it, as their installers couldn’t come for a month and a half (!!). I privately wondered whether we’d have gotten an installer sooner if we’d bought the high-end range. Fortunately, Pat Zeller, the guy who did our fireplace, was available and came to help us out.

Because Pat loves cookies, I made a batch of Ian’s favorite cookie of all time, Chocolate Dreams.

This sparked a discussion about the definition of candy versus cookie, as Chocolate Dreams are pretty much entirely sugar and cocoa powder, with milk and Karo syrup to hold in some oats. Either way, they’re delicious. Turns out, Pat doesn’t care about no-bake cookies, so that just meant more for us.

On Thursday, the delivery guys arrived with our oven. When they asked if I wanted it in the box or not, I immediately realized that we absolutely did want that enormous box. Then, in a burst of (if I may abandon modesty for a moment) brilliance, I asked if they had any extra big boxes in the back of the truck. And they gladly handed over a huge refrigerator box along with our range. I gave them some Chocolate Dreams.

These two boxes we turned into a really great box fort, currently a space ship. You can see Benji’s “bed” on the side, outside the space ship. I don’t ask how that works.

On Thursday, we got the range unpacked, but unfortunately Pat wasn’t able to come to install it until Friday morning.

But fortunately Pat showed up and got it installed in plenty of time for me to bake for our “Friendsgiving Dinner” with our church group. I got a good trial of the new range as through the afternoon I cooked:

• Mashed potatoes
• Steamed carrots
• Bacon
• Roasted beets
• Homemade dinner rolls

It was a veritable glut of oven-use after nearly two weeks without! And everything turned out delicious. Either that, or my friends were fibbing. But, in the ultimate tests — cooking bacon, and baking dinner rolls — the new range worked beautifully.

The new range has nice dual-size burner that boils things really fast with the inner small ring and the outer big ring both on; or simmers things really low with just the small inner ring on. I’m going to have to get used to burners of different sizes, but I think I’m going to like the broader range (har har) of this new stovetop.

The oven is a convection bake, but I didn’t use the convection setting for any of our baking yesterday. I need to experiment a bit to see what kind of difference it makes to baking time. But the oven heated up quickly, which was nice; and I think I’m going to like the rolling-sliding rack that lets you slide things in and out more easily than moving the whole shelf.

So, back to baking for me! Hooray! Let me know if you need any baked goods. I’m going to be keen for baking the next few weeks, I’m sure.