The 'magic' is gone for Easy-Bake Ovens

The genius of the Easy-Bake Oven -- baking with a blessedly inefficient bulb that produces more heat than light -- has turned out to be its undoing.

The lowly 100-watt incandescent bulb is getting the boot as a federal law requiring bulbs to be more energy-efficient kicks in this year. Yet amid the hoo-hah about nanny-state government and mercury content, did no one rise up from the floor of Congress to ask: But what about the Easy-Bake Oven?

Apparently not.

For almost 50 years, the toy has been under Christmas trees and next to birthday cakes, a sort of gateway appliance for kids. OK, for girls. It works like this: A tiny pouch of cake mix is mixed with a tiny bit of water, poured into a tiny pan, placed in the tiny oven, and baked by the heat of a light bulb. A tiny puck of cake emerges, satisfying a tiny appetite.

Could one of those girls once been Michelle Gayer?

"Is the sky blue?" responded Gayer, who owns Salty Tart bakery and currently is a nominee for the nation's outstanding pastry chef, as deemed by the James Beard Foundation. "Me and my brother would play restaurant in the basement and I'd bake in the Easy-Bake and do hamburgers made of Play-Doh. One time I made him eat an entire Play-Doh hamburger and he threw up."

Her baked goods of the time, while perhaps not memorable -- "Whatever was in those packets?" -- were more digestible. Gayer, of Minneapolis, wouldn't go so far as to proclaim the Easy-Bake her culinary inspiration, "but it was a pretty good practice round."

"That takes all the magic out of it," said Francois, co-author of "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day." "Definitely a Christmas present," she said of the oven given by her grandmother. Francois wasn't quite ready to credit the Easy-Bake with her eventual career, either. "What I remember is passing all kinds of unorthodox things through it." Such creativity, nowadays seen on her blog, zoëbakes.com, led to needing a backup oven. "Somehow I remember having dueling ones."

Francois, of Minneapolis, said her baking classes never fail to reveal the toy's iconic nature. "Someone always asks whether I ever used an Easy-Bake Oven."

The inspiration for the oven came from New York City pretzel vendors who kept their wares warm under heating lamps. It debuted in 1963 and was instantly popular, with 500,000 ovens selling that first year for $15.95 -- a sum that now has the buying power of $114.79. Unbelievable, right?

Hasbro, the manufacturer, said it's sold more than 25 million ovens since then. However, almost a million were recalled in 2007 after reports of children getting burned due to a new design that used a ... heating element. The new version reflects a fresh design.

So why has the Easy-Bake Oven prevailed?

That may be.

Mostly, though, baking with a light bulb seemed like magic.

Perhaps this, truly, is how the cookie crumbles.