Scarcely had we returned from our Thanksgiving travels when we received a houseguest in the form of my grandmother, Oma. Oma is slowing down these days so her pace exactly fit the relaxed week we needed to recover from travel. We had carefully not booked anything that whole week, so we had a very pleasant visit with short daily to-do lists, along the lines of Buy A Christmas Present For Jane and Mail A Letter.
On Wednesday I determined to bake an apple cake, based on a newly-discovered recipe that I thought would be scrumptious. I used all the finest ingredients: three fresh Rome apples, honey instead of sugar, freshly-ground oat flour, lots of nuts, etc. It was a perfect cake. It rose properly and smelled lovely when it came out of the oven. In addition to all this, I made Michael's favourite meal of roast chicken, not even forgetting to put the potatoes on to boil ten minutes before his return home.
I was just in time to greet him at the door when we heard a large crash. Running into the kitchen, we were greeted with the sight of broken glass strewn all over the floor, and a smoking heap of cake crumbs on top of the stove. Meanwhile the potatoes were stone cold. I had turned on the wrong burner, and the cake pan had heated and shattered. Dinner was over an hour late, since we couldn't turn on the potatoes until we had cleaned everything up thoroughly. I was torn between relief that there hadn't been a fire, disappointment over the loss of my one 13x9 glass baking pan, and despair over the thought of all those fine, expensive ingredients gone to waste (we had to throw the whole thing away for fear of glass shards. Even I wasn't desperate enough to go picking through the crumbs in search of the occasional edible morsel).
However, the story ends happily enough, because Oma bought me a new glass pan the next day. I made another apple cake and carefully set it to cool on the counter, and all is well.
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4 comments:
That rivals the Anne and Diana story when they were trying to go all out for that important writer lady (Mrs Morgan?) and everything flopped. Great story! Glad that sort of thing doesn't just happen to me.
I'm always turning on the wrong burner, although I haven't accomplished quite that level of disaster yet. However, it's just as fatal to take a glass dish out of the oven and whisk it to the van through winter air.
-- SJ
It was probable the title that made you think of it - the alliteration is very L.M. Montgomery-ish. Wasn't there a chapter entitled A Concert And A Catastrophe? But then, Anne had plenty of catastrophes in her life. =)
I think I have turned on wrong burners before, but never with anything sitting on them, so the only result heretofore was frustration at the thing not cooking. That may have allowed me to grow lax. Now I will scrupulously check and double-check burners when I turn them on! Hmm, I guess our winters don't get cold enough for us to appreciate that phenomenon, SJ.
I melted a cake topper once. Actually I melt plastic on the burner all the time. My stove is right next to my dish drainer.
But it's very sad to lose delicious food to glass shards.
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