Thermostatic Irregularities

It has become clear to me for two reasons that I can no longer put off having my oven repaired.

Reason one:

the first failure of a failing oven thermostat

Reason two:

the total failure of an oven thermostat

Last week I made a lemon poppyseed cake with the intention of sharing the recipe here.  I have made this cake many times, and know it to be quite fine.  I creamed the butter and sugar until they were very light and beautiful.

I beat in the freshest eggs until they were light and even more beautiful.

I remembered to line the pan with parchment paper, and buttered and floured it well.

The batter was deliciously light and lemony, and I licked the bowl clean.

And then it took two hours for the cake to bake.  I knew something was terribly wrong.

The cake looked beautiful.  Until I cut it.

The poppy seeds had sunk to the bottom of the cake (or, to put a very fine point on it, they didn’t rise with the cake).  I was very disappointed.  And not sure how to proceed.  It tasted wonderful.  My son said it was “heavenly delightful,” but my photos weren’t very good.  I thought about trying to hide the very obvious problem, but that didn’t work either.

I made a last-ditch effort to hide the imperfection, but it was wrong, and there wasn’t anything I could do.

One of the reasons for keeping this blog is to help me remember what I did when I want to repeat recipes that I make up as I go along; it was possible that the other times I had made this with success I had used cake flour instead of regular flour.  I don’t always have cake flour on hand, so I use regular flour when I can, and I reasoned this difference could have been the problem.  The only option, as I saw it, was to make another cake with cake flour and compare the results, so I put it aside while we navigated through all the last-days-of-school activities.  (And this cake was enjoyed the by the kids as much as any other, if not more, so none went to waste.)  The two-hour baking time still bothered me, however.

This morning, the first weekday of summer vacation, the sun was shining, the sky was bright blue, the temperature was pleasantly cool, there was a light breeze, and I couldn’t imagine better weather.  I thought about what to have for breakfast, and immediately my mind went to Cherry Almond Muffins.  It was too good an idea not to make it a reality.

So I melted some butter, mixed flour and sugar and ground almonds, added a little vanilla brandy and almond extract, eggs, some milk, plenty of dried cherries, and topped it all good things with sparkling sugar.

I preheated the oven to 400° F by setting the dial at 375°.  The oven thermometer I keep in the oven said it was 400° when I put the muffin tins in.  I started washing the dishes right away, but almost immediately it smelled as if something was burning.  I tried to convince myself that it was just something spilled on the bottom of the oven, or perhaps the sugar that had spilled onto the pan.  It was too soon for the muffins to be burning.  After a couple minutes, I could still smell it, so I checked the oven again, and the thermometer said the oven was 450°.  So I turned the dial to 325° and left the door open a minute to cool it off, but the “heating” light came on when it got down to 425°, so I closed the door again, hoping the temperature would keep dropping and that it was only the cold draft that was causing it to heat up again.

The outside of the muffins had risen up above the centers, and the tops were full of little holes.  It wasn’t right.

I left them to bake a few minutes, and when I went back to check again, the thermometer was again at 450° and the dial was still at 325°.  The muffins were quite brown after only about 10 minutes or so, so I took them out of the oven, and conceded it was time to arrange a visit from the repair man.

The tops were all irregularly shaped and the crust was too dark and too tough, the sparkling sugar wasn’t sparkling, and the muffins were only half the size they should have been.  There was no denying that they baked too fast, just as the lemon poppyseed cake baked too slowly.

It is one thing to know that your oven thermostat is off by 25° one way or the other and compensate accordingly, but it’s something altogether different not to have any control over the temperature.

So there is no more baking until I get the oven fixed.  This is extremely inconvenient.  I have a bridal shower cake to make in the next few weeks, and the wedding cake to follow, so I must get this sorted out sooner rather than later.  Drat!