If I had gone a more familiar route (AKA the tried-and-true Bundt pan), I likely would not have ended up with chocolate-chip pound cake rising up over the never-used pan and oozing like lava all over the oven.
*sigh.... (Cue oven cleaning.)
I decided to attack the problem (after the oven cooled, of course) with some baking soda, damp paper towels and a little elbow grease!
I just dusted baking soda over the slimy spots and let it sit for a moment....
Then I scrubbed gently with some damp paper towels. Most of the grime kind of solidified and got picked up by the baking soda. It was pretty gross.
My quick-fix, baking-soda method worked ok, for the most part; but some of the stubborn, baked-on goo needed "the big guns."
(Enter husband with razor blade.)
Yep. My sweet, helpful hubby got in on the Easter-morning-oven-cleaning action and carefully scraped off the remaining gunk... with a razor blade! EEK! (This is a cleaning method I tend to shy away from... mostly because I am accident prone and bad with sharp objects!) But it worked! And my oven was nearly returned to its original glory! :)
I, of course, lined the bottom of the oven, again, with some heavy-duty aluminum foil. As I've mentioned before, it's much easier to toss out a dirty sheet of foil than it is to clean the oven, and the foil catches the majority of the random food escapees and splatters (except when you have an occasional, unexpected lava flow!)
I also got a wild hair and decided to turn on the "self clean" for the very first time. I don't know why, but this high-heat, door-locking, oven-cleaning cycle always freaks me out a bit. And it was still going when we left for Easter dinner... with my lop-sided pound cake! And since we returned home late last night, I still need to peek inside (and get another photo) to see if my oven is even cleaner now!
Stay posted for an update! ;)
Now, THAT's neat!
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