Happy Birthday Ethan

 

August has been a whirlwind!

We celebrated Ethan's 4th birthday on Saturday. As you can see it was a rainbow soccer theme. Ethan described this elaborate birthday cake to me that he wanted, so I took it upon myself to create his vision. I thought, hey, I have the Betty Crocker Bake'n'Fill. This'll be a piece of cake (ha ha!) Seriously, I made an Elmo head with this thing 2 years ago, and my sister churns out delicious delights all of the time.

I grabbed the Betty Crocker box and took out the pan. Where were the instructions? Hmmm... they were lost in my mess of a remodel-project house. Okay, I know the basics. Dust the pan with flour, use the dome pan and the base pan.

The kids and I mixed up a recipe of Darn Good Chocolate Cake from the Cake Doctor Cookbook and scooped the batter into the pans. It didn't fill the dome pan all the way up. Oh, yeah. I think I remember that it needs room to expand when baking. Into the oven went the two pans. Timer on for 35 minutes.

I went about cleaning up the mess that comes from letting a 15 month old and almost 4 year old loose in the kitchen (hey, they were SO happy!). Sizzle. Sniff. Ewww! What was that smell? I looked at the oven to see smoke coming out. Not good. Smoked meat was okay. Not smoked birthday cake.

I opened the oven and found the dome pan overflowing. Gobs of gooey chocolate cake were falling onto the heating element and burning. There was a lot of cake falling down there! I secured the kids (that means gave them a beater from the frosting to lick!) and grabbed the mongo grill tongs. A few pinches later I had the offending cake batter out of the oven. As a precaution, I put a cookie pan under the dome pan to catch any more drips.

Imagine my surprise when ten minutes late I see FLAMES in the bottom of the oven. That little bit of residue I couldn't get out was on fire. What do I do? I blew it out. No problem. Like I told my husband later, it was just a little fire. So I shut the oven door and let the cake bake. The timer still had 3 minutes left on it.

It was not to be. A minute later my little fire was back. I opened the oven door, blew out the fire again, and set off the smoke alarm. By now Norah was napping and I was on the verge of cursing. But I kept my cool, tore the smoke alarm off of the ceiling and let the smoke pour into the kitchen.

Miraculously the cake survived and we had all of the smoky smell out of the house by the birthday party the next day.

I think the moral of the story is something like: don't assume you remember the instructions to something seemingly harmless like a cake pan. Look up the instructions or you may just burn down the house.

P.S. Ethan had a great birthday party :)