Whirpool Max Mood Microwave Hands-on Review and GadgetyNews Strudel Recipe

If you follow GadgetyNews on Facebook you may have read that I actually won a Whirlpool Max Mood microwave after attending its launch a few weeks ago. Well, it arrived and I’ve put it to the test. Here’s a hands-on review.

The Whirlpool Max Mood microwave has taken that lowly appliance from reheating machine to something which can actually cook real food.

To test this out I decided that I would try and make something which you would generally use your oven for.

After flicking through the recipes on Whirlpool’s site I found the ideal candidate – Apple Strudel.

Not only do I love apple pies/strudels/cakes/turnovers but I stood a fair chance of obtaining the ingredients from my local store on a Sunday afternoon – or so I thought.

OK, so not everything I needed could be sourced; so I decided to buy things I like and create a GadgetyNews Strudel instead.

Here’s my ingredients:

250g of puff pastry (frozen)

2 apples – should be cooking apples but I could only get a pair of Braeburn

60g (2 bags) of Cherry & Berry fruit nibbles – feel free to use currants or other dried fruit.

1 orange which you’ll use for its rind

Some blackcurrant jam, butter, milk and flour

Preparation

Defrost the puff pastry (2-3 hours at room temp) and peel the orange – I used a potato peeler, but there’s probably a real tool for that job.

Roll out the pastry with a rolling pin in to a rectangle (this is what you need the flour for – dust your surface and rolling pin with the flour).

Two things to watch here: 1) ensure that you roll it wide enough to meet in the middle once the filling is in 2) make sure it will still fit in the Max Mood Crisp Plate.

While you’re rolling and measuring soak your dried fruit, in this case the Bear Fruit Nibbles, in warm water, and slice the apples – remove the cores.

Arrange the apples along the middle section of the pastry in two rows.

Drain and dry the cherries and berries and then sprinkle them over the apples, and then add the orange peel.

Encircle the fruity filling with jam.

Fold the pastry over, pinching at the ends to seal in the ingredients. Slash the top a few times just for that studel look.

Slip the strudel onto the buttered crisp plate and brush the top of the pastry with a little milk.

Shove it in the Max Mood, set it on crisp for 10.5 minutes.

Wait for the beep and the smell of baking and then remove to let cool.

Eat whilst still warm with ice cream 🙂

Review

The Whirlpool Max Mood is defintely more than just a microwave.

It does have 700W of microwave power, a JET defrost system but it is also capable of high quality cooking performance with its in-built grill.

Thanks to Whirlpool’s CRISP function you’re able to bake, brown and crisp food to perfection – even if you’re just a tech journalist!

The touch panel controls are great and easy to wipe clean after punching in the times with jammy fingers. It’s just so easy to use.

I can’t recommend thie Max Mood enough to anyone looking for a microwave/grill/crisper that is cool looking and doesn’t take up much of that counter-top real estate – thanks to its curved back it is quite happy to sit in the corner.