The Light Behind the Easy-Bake Oven Goes Out

Image via RetroThing.com

Emma Jacobs
How many of our baking readers made their first cookies in an Easy-Bake oven?
Ronald Howes, the inventor of the Easy-Bake, passed away a few weeks ago, setting off a splash of nostalgia across the blogosphere. The inspiration of millions of chefs and at least one  cookbook, the Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet, the original Easy-Bake Oven debuted in 1963 with a 100-watt incandescent bulb to heat pizza and cakes. Howes had also redesigned the formula for play-dough and he would work for the United States Defense Department, but the Easy-Bake Oven was his shining achievement.
That didn’t mean Howe gave up tinkering on successors to his great work. From Howe’s obituary in his hometown  of Cincinnati:

“We no longer have a garage in our house – it’s a physics lab,” his wife said. “You can hardly walk around in it.”

Odds are, a lot of American garages have one of Howe’s inventions in them. Twenty million Easy-Bake ovens have been sold since 1963. By now, if it did its job right, a lot of those cooks have probably moved on to bigger and better appliances. Did you?