I made a chocolate cake for DH to take to work. Had to double the recipe (I thought) for the 12x18x2 pan. (Reminder to self, only increase cake by another half for this pan!!) Everything seems to be okay until it starts baking. I check on the cake. . . and it has overflowed onto the bottom of the oven. It was burning. . . nothing smells worse than burnt chocolate!! So I take it out-of-the-oven and down the disposal it goes. It had been in almost an hour and was nowhere near done! The oven was a mess, so I decided it time to clean it since the chocolate lava was everywhere and had burned onto the oven!!! Set the oven to the clean setting and smoke starts rolling out!!!! The house looked like it was on fire from the inside with all the smoke. We opened all of the windows, thank goodness it was a nice day!! The inferno finally stopped after about half an hour. But the house still reeks of smoke. DH is going to get some Oust or something like that to clean the air and Febreeze for the couch and anything soft.
I was so disappointed about the cake, I"ll try again tonight but it will be cupcakes not a cake (practice for my cupcake order this weekend)!
Sorry folks, but I knew you would understand my frustration and maybe by tonight I can laugh about it!
TIA
Leslie

That is how my cousin knows when dinner is done, the smoke detector goes off. It is kind of their dinner bell. LOL

Better luck with the cupcakes!

Poor you Leslie! We've all done that at least once! As a matter of fact, it almost happened to me yesterday with an oval pan - for some reason I over fill those.

BTW, I really love the new Febreeze air spray!

Dang--I double the recipe for the 12x18 all the time without any problems. Sorry you had such a mess on your hands--I agree, there isn't much worse of a smell than burnt chocolate!

Did you use a flower nail? If not--try it the next time--it will bake up fater and more evenly.

Lisa

I did try the flower nail .. . had used before with another cake and it came out great! My chocolate cake just wasn't meant to be yesterday!!
Thanx ya'll!!
Leslie

An update to yesterday's disaster. I made cupcakes tonight using the same recipe. No problem. . . ended up with 24 regular cupcakes and 12 minis (for the family). Thanks for your condolences!!
Leslie

When I read the topic I thought of myself. Except my cake doesn't over flow. When I mixed the batter (when I had a mixer) it used to end up all over my cupboards, backsplash, floor, me. It's a thin batter and tends to spray for lack of better word when it gets mixed on high. Anyways now that I have to mix everything by hand, no more mess like that.