Once upon a time, my then teenage son decided to bake a cake. His teacher had given the students a recipe and had dared them to make it for their families.

Hence started an adventure. A venture into the mysteries of the kitchen which was an uncharted territory for my son.

That day’s events stayed etched in my memory(probably in the mind of all the family) for a long time.

It all started on one Saturday morning. First of all the ingredients had to be collected/ purchased. Very dutifully, I got the stuff together. Most of the ingredients needed were found in the kitchen. A few needed were picked up from the grocery store and the baking adventure was all set to begin.

My son refused any assistance in his project and the family was asked kindly to stay away from the site of action. Thankful, that I wasn’t needed to help him, I returned to my own chores and the kitchen was left to the mercy of its new inhabitant.

An hour passed and a very strange smell started to permeate the house. It wasn’t exactly a burning smell, in fact it wasn’t anything I had encountered before. With mixed feelings of trepidation and dread I headed to the kitchen.

Thick fumes greeted me as I neared. The weird smell was more pronounced now. Tentatively I entered the kitchen. A black cloud was emitting from the oven. The work counter was a mess of milk, sugar and egg mixture and standing near the open window was my chef, trying to somehow shoo away the smoke out of it.

I managed to shut my gaping mouth and suppress the harsh words trembling on the tip of my tongue. Hey! What happened here?

Well mom, it was like this….

And there started his explanation of the events preceding the “little accident” in the kitchen.

It appeared that everything was going according to the plan initially. He had done with the measuring of the ingredients and was proceeding to go the second part of the recipe: mixing and whisking!

A timely glance at the recipe reminded him of checking the oven temperature. As he opened the oven door to see if the oven was on, ( it was a gas oven) , the bowl containing the flour and cocoa powder somehow slipped from the counter and ended into the lit oven burner. The flour mixture started to burn, emitting a black smoke and the weird smell ( that had brought me into the kitchen) . In panic, my son tried to retrieve the plastic bowl from the oven but ended by pushing it forward into the burner ! The bowl started to melt as it was made of plastic.

Further panicking ensued and in effort to grab a dishcloth to do something about the flour and the bowl in the oven, he spilled the rest of the ingredients onto the kitchen counter.

The stench of burning plastic and flour was invading the whole house. All family had gathered in the doorway of the kitchen and various suggestions were being put forward as to how to proceed from there on.

The whole of the family, much to the embarrassment of the young chef, was helping to clean up the mess. We opened the back door and the windows to let the stench and smoke escape. It wasn’t a timely action as the smell had invaded the inner parts of the house, and it was a very strong smell ( burned plastic smells really bad) and stayed with us for many a days.

The great spill in the kitchen had to be cleaned and washed to take out the smell of eggs. The oven itself took a lot of elbow grease to clean and lot of time was spent on it.

After that my son never tried to cook or bake anything for a long time. And he was the butt of many a family jokes and taunts by his sisters. ( siblings can never let go a chance of roasting each other for their mess ups ) Our home smell of the disaster for quite some time. The kitchen wall even had to be repainted because of the blackening effect of the smoke.

It was quite a long time after that accident that my son could look at it with anything but embarrassment. But if you remind him of it today, he thinks that it was a funny thing to have happened.

This adventure was a costly experiment that proved that if teenage kids are not familiar with the kitchen, Don’t leave them alone in there!

Hope you enjoyed reading all about the adventure of my son in the kitchen.

Waiting for your comments and feedback.

Thanks for reading.

#Keepitalive

#Cookingdisaster

#Smile