KC chefs and their Easy-Bake Ovens

James Beard Award-winning chef Debbie Gold recently told me that she started out cooking on the Easy-Bake Oven she got when she was six years old: “Everyone had one! You have to learn to cook on a light bulb sometime!”

Lots of future boy chefs started cooking on Easy Bake ovens too, even though the toy’s Web site proclaims “the classic light bulb oven still delights with a girl’s first baking experience.”

That didn’t stop Mark Wingard, the co-owner and chef at You Say Tomato from asking for one and getting it: “I cooked pies, cakes, brownies on it,” he says. “You bet I had one.”