Friday, December 17, 2010

WARNING! Chocolate Cravings Lead to Fire!


It’s 10:00 PM on a Thursday night, I’ve settled onto the couch while watching CSI when I get a horrible craving for chocolate. I weigh my option of going out and braving the avalanche (5 inches of snow) I would have to scrape off of my car to get a milkshake and decided I should probably find an alternative. I realized that explaining to someone that I wrecked my car in the icy conditions, venturing out only for a female chocolate craving, would sound a bit crazy to most people any male.

After scouring my pantry, I realized I had the majority of the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. Mind you, I normally go to bed at 11:00 PM or so, I’m thinking to myself, “I’ve got to do this quick or I’m going to be exhausted in the morning” So I take my self-rising flour (I was out of baking powder and salt) and I begin to make my cookies.

Now let me first mention that my goal has already been reached. I wasn’t really looking for the baked portion of the cookies, only the cookie dough that came out of the equation. However, after eating 3-4 spoonfuls of raw cookie dough, (I can hear my mother now, “Don’t eat that, you’re going to make yourself sick!”) I thought it would be wasteful to throw it all away. So I decided to go ahead and bake the cookies.

My batter was a little stickier than normal, because I didn’t have enough butter for the recipe so I omitted a little flour. Yes I realize that I was doomed to the start of baking these cookies. And yes I realize that baking is an exact science, but when you only want the middle result…it doesn’t really matter. So I grease up my cookie sheets extremely well so they wouldn’t stick to the pan after baking.

I look at the clock as I start to pre-heat the oven. “Holy crap, it’s late, I’ve got to speed this up!” I think to myself, I’ll pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees and it will get to 375 quicker. I understand that this doesn’t logically workout. Although at 10:45 PM when all I wanted to do was go to bed, it worked seamlessly in my head.

I proceed to throw the cookies in the oven, without even letting it pre-heat, not remembering that I had turned the oven up to 500 degrees to magically heat up faster. I went to sit on the couch, not setting a timer (I never do) and expecting to start smelling fresh baked cookies.

Smell was not the first sense I noticed…I look up from my couch and I have smoke billowing out of my kitchen! “WHAT THE HECK!! WHY ISN’T MY SMOKE ALARM GOING OFF!!!” I run into the kitchen open up the door to flaming trays of cookies! My gas stove at 500 degrees had somehow managed to completely blacken and catch one of my trays on fire. I immediately threw each pan in the sink and hosed them off. With smoke still billowing out of my kitchen I’m secretly thankful, yet scared that my smoke alarms aren’t screaming at 11:00 PM for all of my neighbors to hear.

After I managed to cool down the trays, and fan away some of the smoke, I started looking for my smoke alarms. Oh wait, I have a total of one (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in my 84 year old house. Thank you previous owner…let me also mention that its location is in my bedroom on the second floor! Well awesome. If there’s a fire, I’ll know it’s there, right before it traps and kills me! What a night!

My ruined cookie sheets

Moral of the story, if you’re going to give into you’re cravings, take the easy way out and go after that milkshake in the avalanche of snow and icy roads. If not you may end up with a kitchen fire and nightmares of dying in your own bedroom.

P.S. Smoke Alarm Installation happening ASAP!

1 comment:

  1. This wasn't very bright. I'm not sure I'd put it out to the public to read.

    ReplyDelete