12/7/08

. . . kill . . . kill . . . kill . . .

Dowlan turned on the wrong burner.

The burner he turned on was NOT the burner under the kettle. The burner he turned on was the one under the chocolate cake I'd JUST taken out of the oven and was still sitting, in it's Pyrex dish, on the stove top to cool.

Then he leaves to go take out the trash. I guess he subconsciously knew that the earning of points was going to be vital to his existence.

I am on the other side of the kitchen, working on the second of the three cakes, carefully destroying it and mashing it, forming it into balls.

I smell burning chocolate cake. I turn to see smoke rising. I grab mitts, pick it up, set it on the burner on the other side of the stove top because it is so hot that I can't get it any farther and I am afraid that it will harm my countertop.

I stick them the mitts back in the drawer and turn to walk back to my cake balling when I hear a POP.

I turn to find that the pyrex has exploded. Shards of broken glass litter the stovetop, the floor and the eighty tiny and perfectly-formed spheres of cake-y goodness that were awaiting dipping.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

OH NO!!! And he is still walking and breathing?
Congrats on not killing him!
You are a much better woman than I!

Betsy Hart said...

OMG! I would cry. Really. I'm sorry.

Kira said...

Oh noooooooooooooo!!! My husband did this a few months ago. MONTHS. We're STILL finding bits of exploded glass.
May the skin under Dowlan's fingernails find the most. Amen.
;)

Anonymous said...

I turned on the wrong burner with an empty pyrex measuring cup on it. I moved it to the metal sink top, and that cooled the bottom rapidly enough that is shattered. I realized later I should have just turned the burner off and left the measuring cup on the hot burner for them to cool off together. But of course it didn't have burning chocolate cake in it.

msguish said...

Poor Gretchen. But you know you're going to laugh about it later. And it does give a really good story to tell at the party you were making the cake balls for!

Anonymous said...

Ohhh.. I did that. Sort of. Except my oven caught on fire. So in an attempt to save my awesome pyrex dish and I yanked it out of the flames and threw it in the sink.
Then a minute later stupid me turned on the sink and POP. There went my pyrex dish.

Lynn said...

Oh Gretchen! I am so sorry! I have done something similar - that's when I learned the very valuable lesson that Pyrex and Corningware do not have the same ability to heat on the stove top - regardless of how similar they may look. Sorry for the explosion of glass and the destruction of cake balls!

Anonymous said...

Ouch. So Sorry....

Hoping the pieces do not find "little fingers."

By the way, the quiche recipe continues to circulate. My cousin has already forwarded it to another teacher at her school.

Great idea for the laundry help - don't worry about the state of your home. Most people with "clean" homes have their own "dirty" little secrets (usually in the form of overstufffed closets, attics, and garages).

Thinking of you guys.....