Scraping Cookies off the Bottom of the Oven...

Yes, seriously.
Let me start by saying that lately, my 17 year old daughter has decided she wants to learn to cook. Naturally this tickled me to death because this is sorta "my thing". She's been trying some recipes and blessing my socks off because I get to teach her the things that I have learned.
So she found this recipe for a "cookie cake" she wants to make. Today I had two babies, and she decided that today was the day. I watched the babies- kept them out of the kitchen- and let her just go at it. She asked me what to bake it on- I'm thinking "cookie- stoneware". Definitely. I told her to bake it on my round flat stone because ideally it should be round I guess. I thought nothing in the world about it. A few minutes later I go into the kitchen and there is smoke coming out of the oven, cookie batter pouring out of the bottom of the oven. At this point I have no idea what I'm about to find. I open carefully and there sits my beautiful round stone covered in cookie dough, as is the ENTIRE BOTTOM OF THE OVEN!!! O. EM. GEE!!! I had no clue what had happened. I could only guess that the batter was somehow not quite thick enough and it boiled over before it had a chance to set.
We aired the smoke out of the house, let everything cool off, then I went and scraped hard crispy cookie off the bottom of the oven, the floor, and the inside of the oven door. Stuck the shop vac in there and sucked all of that cookie up in 60 seconds. Not hard to clean up, thankfully.
So she's determined she's making this cookie tonight. A little before ten, she goes back to the kitchen. I'd been on the phone- business of course- so she got started. After I hung up, she asked if we had more flour. (?!?!?!?!) ok we just bought a bag of flour and I told her this. She told me she had maybe a cup left. I asked her how much the recipe called for. I don't remember what she said because I decided I needed to get up and go in there. There on the counter sat a small silver canister. With maybe a cup.. Of a soft powdery white substance... Known to the world as POWDERED SUGAR!!! Well after I stopped laughing uncontrollably, I understood completely why the other cookie just poured all over the oven. Ha!! I showed her where the FLOUR is kept, she made the cookie, and it was quite delicious. I have to say - I give her 5 stars.
Btw- after she reads this tomorrow, you will all be invited to my funeral!! Night!! :)

Why Doesn't Mine Look Like the One in the Picture??

Ok. I'm a Pinterest Junkie. Ask anyone. If I'm not up to a thousand pins yet, I'm dang close to it. I love the crafts, the homemade detergents, the mason jars, the decorating, sooo many things!! But the one thing, I have to say that I like the best is.... The RECIPES!!! And if you know me even a little bit, you already knew that without me having to tell you. All of my Christmas recipes canes from Pinterest. Since then, I have made several things from Pinterest, and still plan on making every single recipe I have pinned.
So over the weekend I found a recipe for this divine looking cinnamon roll cake. I freaking LOVE cinnamon rolls!!! I could eat cinnamon rolls all the time. The cinnamon- the icing- oh my!! The ingredients are just basic. I have them on hand so I made it. I got my beautiful stand mixer down and I mixed that bad boy up. I worked meticulously to follow the directions carefully because as excited as I was, I was bound to leave something out.
Baking is my favorite thing ever. But I've noticed the last few things I've baked from scratch have not exactly risen correctly. Several factors could have contributed to this. First thing I did was blame the flour. I threw out all the flour and bought all new flour. The next time, I blamed the MS humidity. Humidity takes the blame for a lot of things around here. (Mostly cooking and hair. )
This time I didn't have humidity problems. I popped open a new bag of flour. Yet still, the timer went off, I opened the oven, and where the cake part was supposed to rise up all around the cinnamon part and make this wonderful flaky caky rolly goodness, I had a flat dry piece of something resembling a cake, with some yummy crunchy cinnamon goodness on top. Nevertheless, I drizzled on my icing and we ate it. I was still not happy. I had to figure out why the CRAP my cakes would not rise!!! (oh- I did take pictures, and I am trying to figure out how to send them from my iPhone)
So I checked my ingredients again. Everything was fine. Except. The baking powder. Turns out, this stuff expires. And I had three cans of it. The one that I happened to be using- yea. It expired in 2002. Yep. 2002. I'm hoping the only thing that I get out of that is a flat cake. Surely I can't get botulism or salmonella from baking powder. You think?
So needless to say, I threw out ALL the baking powder in the house, and hubby bought me more today. So I am good to go until December of 2013.
And yes, I have posted pictures of what this cake is SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE, and then, WHAT MINE LOOKED LIKE!!! GAH!!!