Jill Sandwich
the turds of Optimus Prime
I would have posted this in the Cookoff thread, but there's too many tasty dishes in there to spoil it, so here's a cautionary tale for all of you.
One of my extra-curricular activities is making desserts to order, I usually do cheesecakes, recently I've been making Christmas puddings and I got an order for a banoffi pie. Banoffi pies are easy and tasty. The toffee part, which is condensed milk caramelised in its' can, this takes 3 hours to boil. Uh-huh.
The night of the incident was quite fun, we hosted a Christmas dinner for friends, and during the joviality of the evening I forgot to put the cans on the boil. When everyone had gone about midnight, I remembered and got the caramel started and baked the pastry base.
3 hours later, after refilling the pan with boiling water regularly, the cans were ready, and I was ready for bed too. So I took the cans off the boil. I have been making banoffi pies for years this way without incident, but as I pulled the pan to the cool hob, BANG!
I was in my boxers by now, and I felt the boiling hot caramel hit me. Almost instinctively I ran to the shower, as I got to the kitchen door the burning pain started and I was screaming and 'it was a blur' and I was in the cold shower washing the sticky burning off.
Imagine THIS but with boiling hot caramel instead.
While I was in the shower Mrs Sandwich had gone to the store to get some Aloe Vera cream, and when I felt I could leave the cooling water, I went to look up what to do on the NHS direct website. I had to get to hospital, and got to the Accident + Emergency about 4am, and got seen to in about 15 minutes, where they assessed my wounds (my skin was bubbling up nicely) and had my blisters drained with a syringe (although he neglected to tell me this as he was lunging at me with the needle.) After I was dressed and discharged, it was 6am, and they had referred me for the plastic surgery department of a nearby hospital at 9am, so I tried to cram a couple of hours sleep.
At the plastics department, the doctor gave a more thorough assessment, and thankfully after prodding my burns diagnosed them as superficial, which means no nerve damage or skin grafts. She then popped my now enormous blisters and peeled them off to leave the raw skin open to heal, then put special dressings for burns, and bandaged me up. I have to go back in a week for fresh dressings.
MMm crunchy! I will leave you with what happened to my kitchen:
The caramel exploded with so much force it blasted all the way up to the ceiling
And something hit the extractor fan hard enough to smash the filter. I am lucky I wasn't peering into the pan at the time. Finally, here's the culprits:
The moral of the story is, buy pre-made caramel/dulche de leche.
One of my extra-curricular activities is making desserts to order, I usually do cheesecakes, recently I've been making Christmas puddings and I got an order for a banoffi pie. Banoffi pies are easy and tasty. The toffee part, which is condensed milk caramelised in its' can, this takes 3 hours to boil. Uh-huh.
The night of the incident was quite fun, we hosted a Christmas dinner for friends, and during the joviality of the evening I forgot to put the cans on the boil. When everyone had gone about midnight, I remembered and got the caramel started and baked the pastry base.
3 hours later, after refilling the pan with boiling water regularly, the cans were ready, and I was ready for bed too. So I took the cans off the boil. I have been making banoffi pies for years this way without incident, but as I pulled the pan to the cool hob, BANG!
I was in my boxers by now, and I felt the boiling hot caramel hit me. Almost instinctively I ran to the shower, as I got to the kitchen door the burning pain started and I was screaming and 'it was a blur' and I was in the cold shower washing the sticky burning off.
Imagine THIS but with boiling hot caramel instead.
While I was in the shower Mrs Sandwich had gone to the store to get some Aloe Vera cream, and when I felt I could leave the cooling water, I went to look up what to do on the NHS direct website. I had to get to hospital, and got to the Accident + Emergency about 4am, and got seen to in about 15 minutes, where they assessed my wounds (my skin was bubbling up nicely) and had my blisters drained with a syringe (although he neglected to tell me this as he was lunging at me with the needle.) After I was dressed and discharged, it was 6am, and they had referred me for the plastic surgery department of a nearby hospital at 9am, so I tried to cram a couple of hours sleep.
At the plastics department, the doctor gave a more thorough assessment, and thankfully after prodding my burns diagnosed them as superficial, which means no nerve damage or skin grafts. She then popped my now enormous blisters and peeled them off to leave the raw skin open to heal, then put special dressings for burns, and bandaged me up. I have to go back in a week for fresh dressings.
MMm crunchy! I will leave you with what happened to my kitchen:
The caramel exploded with so much force it blasted all the way up to the ceiling
And something hit the extractor fan hard enough to smash the filter. I am lucky I wasn't peering into the pan at the time. Finally, here's the culprits:
The moral of the story is, buy pre-made caramel/dulche de leche.
