Freestanding cookers: How we test

Cake baking

Cake baking test

We bake two trays of cakes in each of the cookers. We follow the manufacturer’s instructions about the temperature to bake them at and which shelf-levels to put them on.

How well the cakes are baked allows us to see how evenly the heat is distributed around the oven. In all, that’s a mouthwatering 576 cakes.

Oven

We set the ovens to reach 150, 180 and 200ºC and we record how quickly they reach these temperatures.

Toast test

Temperature probes measure how well cookers maintain the right temperature. They also record any effect boiling pans on the hob have on the temperature of the top oven compartment.

Grill

We toast white bread on the grill tray to see how far the heat spreads.

The colour of the bread is then assessed and this shows us how well the heat from the grill is distributed. In all, this adds up to 520 slices or 26 loaves.

Hob

Rice pudding is heated on maximum then left to simmer to show us how well the cookers heat at low temperatures without burning the food.

Electric hob thermal image

Heat distribution

A pan of boiling water is heated to 200 degrees. We then take a thermal image photograph to show the spread of the heat across the hob.

Convenience

We check how easy the cookers are to use and how easy it is to keep them clean.