A masterpiece ???!@#@#!!

Wow! I cannot believe that my last post was on February 1! Quite a bit has "passed under the bridge" over that past 23 days. I will spare you the details but I have been so busy and it has kept me away from my computer.

As I have shared with you before, I teach a young adult Sunday School class. Most weeks I try to prepare a morning snack type food to go along with our every-Sunday-morning -cup-of-coffee. Well, last Sunday morning I prepared a "Sock It To Me" cake. It is a sour cream cake with brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans in the center. I planned it to come out of the oven just before I left for class so that it would be nice and warm.

Everything seemed to be going well. . . however, I should have got a clue when the top of the cake began to brown extra quickly. This cake bakes for 1 hour -- so after 15 - 20 minutes had passed, I went to check on it and a bit of smoke was coming from the oven door -- just a little -- and it had the smell of almost burnt . . I opened the oven door and was shocked to see a dark, dark brown color on top of the cake! I placed aluminum foil over it to prevent it from browning any further - which didn't work this time :)

Finally, the 1 hour baking time was complete and the timer went off. I checked the cake for doneness and it seemed fine -- maybe a little moist, but it looked fully cooked. Since this was in a bundt pan, the blackened top would become the bottom, so I decided to cut off the burnt part before turning the cake out of the pan.

Here is the beautiful browned/blackened part I cut off.

YUCK!

And now the beautiful masterpiece I had to offer my class!

This was supposed to be a beautifully formed bundt shaped cake! I normally consider myself a fairly good cook -- so how in the world did this not test out as RAW BATTER?@#@!! The dark stuff is the pecans, cinnamon and brown sugar mixed with cake batter.

I quickly grabbed my phone to take pictures so the class would know that I tried to bring them something good to eat. Also -- I just happened . . to run into a few church board members on the way to class . . . with proof of the need for a new oven. :)

Guess what! We will be getting a NEW OVEN! The oven at the parsonage (church owned) has been there since the 1980's when the house was built! We have repaired it twice so we are not going to mess with it any more.

I would love to hear your recommedations as to brand, type, etc and your experience with ovens. I am going to measure and see if we can put in double ovens -- badly needed in a parsonage! I look forward to hearing your comments -- that is -- if you are still out there reading this blog :)

Love, Sherry