The Day the Cake EXPLODED!

There was a day when a cake exploded in our kitchen and it was very scary.... in fact, I never even knew such a thing COULD happen, so I am sharing this to warn others of the possibility.

Supper was about all ready... and the table was set. We were having baked potatoes with butter and cheese sauce, cottage cheese and corn. Yes, there should have been a salad in there too, but things were hectic and I don't think one had been made.

A cake had even been baked and had just been taken out of the oven and set on an unheated burner on the stove to cool (We do this often.. with baked goods fresh from the oven).  Meanwhile, someone put the corn in a pan on the stove and turned the burner on quite high to get it done quickly... we were rushing to get supper on.  The problem was that the wrong burner had been turned on.  :(  

All of a sudden, there was a loud bang and glass flew everywhere.


We all rushed to the kitchen to find the girls crying and scared, but thankfully, unhurt. They said there was a fire... there was a tiny flame in the cake - you can see the charred remains here.  I have no pictures of all of that... things were too busy as we dealt with the emergency.

The large glass cake pan was on the burner, but all of the sides were gone and this little flame was starting. The burner had already been turned off, but how to remove this mess all over the burner?  The whole pan was in pieces... even the bottom. I quickly grabbed a wooden spoon and 2 big cookie sheets with sides, while a son dumped baking soda on the small flame.  I used the wooden spoon to scrape cake and glass off the hot burner onto the pan.. then also on to the next pan.


What a mess! Now that the fire was out, and the mess was off of the burner, we took stock of what else was going on.

Like I said, the girls were unhurt... they were both across the room when it blew... I shudder to think of what could have happened to them if they had still been in front of the stove. I am so thankful for God's care of them. One of them was barefoot and was helped from the kitchen to avoid the glass on the floor.



My son had scrubbed a LOT of potatoes to bake (he likes to eat a lot and leftover baked potatoes make a nice small potato salad). The plates were already dished up on the table and many extra potatoes were on the stove on a cookie sheet.  This is one of the potatoes on the stove... see the glass embedded into it?









 
 Here you can see the glass IN the potato and more beside it.

There was glass ON the table, all over the floor, on counters, a little in the two adjoining rooms... it was a very sobering mess.

We threw out all of the potatoes (about a 10 pound bag's worth), the cottage cheese, the nacho cheese, the corn, the cake, all 6 sticks of butter sitting on the counter softening for baking, and more.   No, there was no glass on the butter that we could see, BUT this was not a time to take any chances at all... and there WAS glass on the counter, so we threw it all out. My husband swept glass, a son hunted for a box for all of the glass... and we all worked to clean up, all the while giving many thanks to God for protecting the girls. What a blessing that no one was hurt!!!!  NO ONE WAS HURT!  Wow!   We are still giving thanks for that.


I use many glass pan... Pyrex and other brands and I love them. I have glass bread pans, casserole dishes and more. They take more room to store, but I like them and they work well for us.

I had no idea such a thing like this could happen... and by the way, it is rare that a wrong burner gets turned on, and this should NOT have happened.  We had a new stove and the controls are a bit different from the old one. Plus all of the rushing around... plus, my adrenal fatigue and extra tiredness the last week have combined to leave me not making many of the meals at all... and the girls are very capable... this was just one of those accidents. Very frightening... and a wake up call to be much more careful, but everyone is fine... it is all taken care of... and I am so thankful. 

Will I still use Pyrex and such glass pans? Yes, absolutely... I love using them and will continue. We have been careful with them in the past, but will be even more careful of them now.  The kids told some friends what had happened... and at some point, they had the same thing happen to them!  I had never heard that story, so it seemed like a good idea to do this post as a testimony to God's protection of us in this emergency... and also as a warning to be aware that such a thing CAN happen, though it must be rather rare.  

Why did it blow?  I don't know... we figure the concentrated heat on the bottom of the already hot pan must have done something...  these are not meant to use on a burner. So, this is just a warning from our mistake... and I hope you never experience a similar one.... this is a "heads up" to be extra careful.

By the way, my husband went to buy take-out pizza that night and we enjoyed it...  and we were extra thankful for God's blessings.  My sons mourned the loss of the apricot cake also, but there will be other cakes. For now, I am so utterly thankful for God's mercies in this situation.  Have you ever had this happen?  Have you heard of it happening?  I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Thank you for visiting my blog today... I hope you have a good week. 

 












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