Adventures in Baking

Last Thursday night I spent the evening watching my favorite TV shows and baking cupcakes for my sister's surprise birthday party. While watching Community, I was startled by the sound of my smoke alarm going off.

I began running around like a crazy person! I ran over to the smoke alarm to fan it off, but then a second smoke alarm starting ringing too. Smoke alarms in stereo is probably the worst sound ever!

I ran back into the kitchen after I realized I needed to take the cupcakes out of the oven. Then I ran back to the smoke alarm, forgot a towel, ran back into the kitchen, ran back to the smoke alarm, and began jumping and fanning at the same time. Ran back into the kitchen to turn on the exhaust, then back to the alarms. Finally it was silent again (except for Joel McHale on the TV in the other room).

How was it possible that my cupcakes had burned? There were still four minutes left on the timer! A few minutes later my oven started beeping at me. The display read E2 F3. That was familiar. I had this same problem last year.

My oven is a Whirlpool Gold Gas Range (Model #GW395LEPS05), less than two years old. It was brand-new when we moved into our house in January 2008. Less than five months later, my oven started burning cupcakes. The insides of the cupcakes were exploding everywhere! I called a repair guy who ended up replacing my temperature sensor. The sensor wasn't telling my oven that it was hot enough, so it just kept getting hotter and hotter. I think it got to 600 degrees when the repair guy was there!

Now my oven is doing it again. Unfortunately, my oven only had a one-year warranty, so it won't be free this time. I called Whirlpool this morning, told them my story (the same problem that was repaired last year), and they offered to send me the parts for free. Yeah! My wonderful husband will be doing the installation.

The big question is: Why does this only happen when I'm baking cupcakes :)