8 Essential Recipes to Bake in Your Slow Cooker
If you own a slow cooker, you may not know it, but you also own a free-standing, electric mini-oven that’s ideal for baking loads of things, from breads and brownies to fruits crisps and cheesecakes. If you think about it, it makes sense: The slow cooker is a heavy ceramic pot that heats from the bottom, with a lid that seals it tightly. It’s not so different from your oven — even if you can’t fit a sheet pan in it.
It’s time to open your mind to the world of slow cooker baking, starting with these essential recipes.
1. How To Make Bread in the Slow Cooker
If you have labored for years in the bread orthodoxy, where kneading was king and only a hot oven would do, prepare to let go of a few things. With very little effort and a shortened time frame, the slow cooker will transform the way you make bread.
Get the recipe: How To Make Bread in the Slow Cooker
2. How To Make Crunchy Granola in the Slow Cooker
Making your own granola is a great way to eat healthful whole grains, save money, and kick that boxed-cereal habit. Making it in the oven is time-consuming and does require some attention, while the slow cooker allows you to ignore it while it cooks. This method is a real game-changer, and may just become a weekly breakfast-prep habit.
Get the recipe: How To Make Crunchy Granola in the Slow Cooker
3. Slow Cooker Cinnamon Rolls
If you thought using refrigerated tubes of cinnamon roll dough was as easy as it got, try baking them in the slow cooker. You can completely ignore the process, and the moist heat inside the cooker ensures that they won’t dry out.
Get the recipe: Slow Cooker Cinnamon Rolls
4. Slow Cooker Apple Crisp
Apple crisp is a crowd-pleasing dessert, and nobody needs to know how simple it is for the cook. The slow cooker does a fabulous job of simmering the fruit to melting tenderness. The trick to getting the topping to become crunchy and crisp is brilliant. Hint: it involves a towel!
Get the recipe: Slow Cooker Apple Crisp
5. Slow Cooker Chocolate Lava Cake
Forget the fussy, individual servings of chocolate lava cake, and get all the decadence in one easy crock pot. This method makes it easy to serve a lush, chocolatey treat to a group, and people can serve themselves as much as they’d like.
Get the recipe: Slow Cooker Chocolate Lava Cake
6. Slow Cooker Peach and Blueberry Cobbler
It’s ironic that when peaches and blueberries are at their best is also the time when you are the least likely to want to heat up the kitchen with a hot oven, or spend precious daylight rolling out pie dough. Enter this easy cobbler recipe, which gives you all the pleasure of a pie in a comforting cobbler form, using that slow cooker magic.
Get the recipe: Slow Cooker Peach and Blueberry Cobbler
7. Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker Cheesecake
The slow cooker is transformed into a steamy bain-marie in this ingenious recipe, producing a rich, creamy dessert. The unexpected bonus is that the slow heat and steam conspire to make a cheesecake without the cracks that often appear when you take a conventional cheesecake out of the oven.
Get the recipe: Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker Cheesecake
8. 3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Apple Pie
If you love a dessert that takes a few minutes to assemble, you’ll love this convenient cake. Vanilla cake mix, canned apple pie filling, butter, and a slow cooker results in a gooey, fruity version of an apple pie.
Get the recipe: 3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Apple Pie