Whether it’s for my sorority, for a friend’s birthday, or just because my roommates and I are in the mood for chocolate chip cookies, I’ve had to resort to using the kitchen in my residence hall time and time again. While the actual kitchen itself is equipped with a full refrigerator, a stove, a sink, and an oven, none of the above is useful unless you have other kitchen necessities handy, including bowls, trays, and the like. If you’re anything like my friends and I, we bought next to nothing for the kitchen when we were shopping for college supplies since our residence hall requires us to purchase a meal plan. After much brainstorming and innumerable burnt cookies, I’ve come up with a few tips to help all of the students lacking a kitchen of their own. 
Every time I want to make a cake or brownies, I only purchase the mix and somehow manage to completely forget about the oil and eggs that are necessary to make these baked goods actually come out the way they are supposed to. Once I’m back in my warm dorm there is no way I’m going to trek to the grocery store all over again, so I usually try the POD. To my surprise, they always seem to have just what I need. Although we typically think of the POD as just a place to buy Doritos or Oreos, it does carry most of the kitchen necessities that are easily forgotten.
After mixing all of the ingredients in a Tupperware container, it’s always a struggle finding something to actually bake the cookies on. Of course most of us don’t have a metal tray lying around in our dorm room, so we need an alternative. Aluminum foil, something that almost everyone has, works surprisingly well for baking cookies. The fact that aluminum foil doesn’t need to be washed in the tiny bathroom sink after it’s used is also a plus. I highly recommend this method.
While it seems like a feat to bake something decent in the residence hall kitchen, it’s not so difficult once you overcome the minor obstacles. Sometimes we all just need a warm late night snack to aid in our studying, so why not take advantage of the underrated kitchens that our residence halls have to offer?
