When Coffee Cakes Go Wrong, Vol. 1

Yesterday was a fabulous day for me in the beginning.  I woke up early, did all my laundry, had steaks laid out for dinner defrosting, watched a really good movie on Netflix as I aforementioned laundry, had a nice easy leftover lunch of chicken meatballs and was enjoying my day all the way around.  I was productive!  I even worked on my book a bit!  *gasp*  And then, sitting there, I was blinded by a glint of gold from my bookshelf.  (literally, a sun beam hit it and it near blinded me)  I went to the bookshelf to move the book out of the sunlight so I could watch the end of my movie when I realized what I was holding.  It intrigued me.  Then all hell broke loose.

I was holding this massive cookbook about chocolate in my hands.  I had bought it on clearance at Borders about two years ago.  The cover is like a massive chocolate bar and the book sleeve is gold.  It looks like something Willy Wonka would publish now in retrospect.  But I had never opened it before.  Its just sat there looking all Las Vegas jazz hand fabulous with its sparkley, shiny cover.  So I carried it over to the couch with me and started thumbing through it.  The WHOLE entire cookbook has chocolate is some variation in every recipe.  I think I gained 5 pounds picking it up and looking through it.

I found a really good looking coffee cake and I thought I'd make it and we'd have it this weekend as we have ALOT of projects to do this weekend and didn't really have time to mess with breakfast.  So I preheat my oven to 450 and get all my dry ingredients mixed...I'm creaming my butter, cream cheese and vanilla together.  Sprayed my pan and its sitting there waiting anxiously.  Oh it looked so good.  This cream cheese/vanilla batter smelled amazing and then it got a crunchy topping of hazelnuts and dark chocolate strudel on top.  I slide it in, set the timer for 50 minutes and back to my movie I went.

Oh the delicious smells that wafted my way after 10 minutes.  Jon would be home in an hour and I knew he'd walk in the door and go "What is that smell?!" and be all happy joy joy over having a coffee cake for the weekend.  (he's easily pleased)  However, I should have been suspicious if at 10 minutes in I could already smell it.  That probably shouldn't have been happening already.  I ignored my gut instinct and went back to my movie with Jake Gyllenhaal.  (~love~)  And then about 10 minutes later, I got a bitter smell and turned to see how much time I had left on my stove.  Smoke was billowing out of my stove door. 

<-- This is what I had left.  I was immediately like "WHAT THE HECK!?"  Nevermind the smoke alarm going off or opening a door to let said smoke out.  Oh no.  I grabbed that cheery, sun shiney cookbook and opened it to page 459 and re-read that stupid recipe, so assured that I had done EVERYTHING it said.  Stupid cookbook.  Wasted about $10 in ingredients and it burnt!  I grumbled as I scanned every inch of that page.  Then it dawned on me, staring me right in the face.  "Preheat oven to 350 degrees."   This is what happens when coffee cakes go wrong and are baked at 100 degrees over what they're supposed to.  lol  I am defeated.

The delicious looking, correctly cooked version of this coffee cake will be appearing on Monday, lest I somehow burn down my house inadvertently this weekend.  I blame Jake Gyllenhaal's naked bum for this one.  I was distracted.  Dang Jarhead movie. lol