Private Finished Burning Is Not Baking

Jae hummed, and fiddled with the temperature of the oven. He's lost some time, so he should increase the temperature and cook the muffins for a shorter time. A part of him wondered if that would work out okay. Surely it'll be fine. "Ah, no, not yet. They'll need, um, ten more minutes." He said, almost doubling the recommended temperature on the recipe. There. The muffins might not look the prettiest but they'll get done in time.

"There." Jae looked back towards his station and noted the mess around there and Katie's. Flour and sugar had somehow found itself all over. "Baking is a lot more mess than I expected." He said with a chuckle.

"Soon." Jae agreed. He set a ten minute timer on his phone then surveyed their little mess. "Hmm, I'll start washing pans and bowls if you want to wipe down counters?" He offered. They'd have to clean eventually, and if they were to make additional batches then it made sense to get their space clean for the next round.

Jae gathered up bowls and utensils and took them to the sink and began washing. He was elbow deep in dish water when he smelled something. What was that smell? "Do you smell that?" He asked, turning to Katie.

Jae turned to the oven the same time as Katie and froze at the sight of smoke. That wasn't right. Why was there smoke? What the heck does someone do when smoke is pouring out of an oven? Katie rushed over, shutting the oven off and Jae finally remembered how to move. He joined her beside the oven, grabbing the oven mitts as he went.

The teen carefully opened the door and smoke billowed out as a black cloud. It enclosed them for and sent him into a fit of coughs. After several, eye-watering seconds the smoke cleared and they could clearly see the fate of their baked goods. "I. . . I don't think these are okay." Jae said. Every one of the muffins and cupcakes had overflowed onto the pans then dripped down to the bottom of the oven. Where it burned to a crisp. Both the muffins and cupcakes looked like soupy charcoal.

"I, um. . . . I didn't think baking would be this hard. . . um." This was kinda bad and they had to make several batches of baked goods? Jae realized he probably should not have increased the oven temperature and that James should never learn about this disaster.

What do they do now? Jae puzzled over this like a problem in a school book. There was no way they could leave the oven like this. That was a given. Then the matter of the cupcakes and muffins. The two of them were tasked with making several batches, and two of those were burned to a crisp. A difficult problem, but not unsolvable.

Jae stubbornly shook his head at the mention of getting help. Call it pride, or pure stubbornness, but getting help felt like admitting defeat and Jae was not ready to concede just yet. "We'll throw these away and I'll clean the oven." He said, turning a plan of action into motion. "We'll be short some muffins and cupcakes but we can finish this." Baking was not going to get the best of him!

"Let's get a second oven heating up. And, um, this time I'll keep it on the temperature listed in the recipe." That. . . hurt to admit but this wasn't the time to be hiding mistakes. "And, maybe I shouldn't fill the cups up so much." He added, looking over the goopy mess left behind when the mixture spilled over the tray.

Katie was, as the Americas say, a real trooper. Neither the mess, nor the burnt food ruined her good cheer and it was kinda inspiring. "Now that we got our mistakes out of the way, maybe we can actually bake something right." He said, her mood infectious. Jae took their pans and scrapped off most of what he could into trash before depositing them into the sink. He found heavy duty cleaning supplies around the corner in a side room and got to scrubbing the oven.

It was dirty work, and soon his arms were black but by the time he was done Kaite made a huge dent in the dishes. He surveyed their work, pleased and oddly ready to try again. "Hmm?" Katie suggested working together and felt that would likely be a good idea. "Yeah, we should. Let's start with the cupcakes. I'm still traumatized by my muffins."