Wendy/Darwin says, "Accepted into the Archive. A holiday-themed 'near miss' and 'personal account.' One more reason to be leery of a fruitcake, be it human or be it 'food'."

Reading the story about the Father with the PhD reminded me of my own father. In particular a little incident that came to be known in the family as the great "fruitcake" incident.

First a bit of back story. I love cooking. Every year I will bake one or two fruitcakes, which usually end up being given to the family and neighbors. Since I use various alcohols in my mix, people actually EAT my fruitcakes. Now I've been known to experiment with my cakes, poking around with various types of alcohol. In 2005, after suffering a shortage of whiskey (Jack Daniel's) that I had been using for this one cake, I promptly searched about the kitchen. In the end I settled upon this bottle of Tequila. Mixing that in the cake, I poured the batter and slid the pan home.

Now, since Alcohol burns, when you bake a fruit cake you only use a low temperature. No higher than 250 degrees. That's so your cakes don't catch on fire. Never a good thing and really hard to explain WHY the top of the cake is charred.

Right as I slid that last pan in, I turned to do other things when I heard my father come into the room. Poking around he saw what I was doing and started making suggestions. Dad, like I loved cooking and he was darn good at it. Turning, I remember him looking at my oven and then back at me and laughing. "You'll never get it done like THAT." He said, and reached to turn the heat up to about three fifty.

Remembering my previous flambe, I turned to him and sighed. Reaching over to the stove I said to him "Dad, you have to cook it that low, Alcohol burns..." At least that's what I started to say. Right as my hand touched the knob and I said "Dad", there was this loud WHOMP! The oven door blew open and a sheet of blue flame shot straight up and out of it, burning ALL the hair off my arm (It's never grown back) and leaving a singe mark on the ceiling. Standing there dazed for a moment, the smell of fruit cake mixing with burnt hair, I looked over at my dad only to see him with this look of utter shock on his face. Before heading up to the ER, which he was nice enough to take me to do, I managed to tell him "Alcohol burns."

Dad wasn't so bad about it afterward, but you try explaining to the ER that you've got a burn on your arm because your fruit cake exploded.

Submitted on 11/27/2009

Submitted by: Chad Peters
Reference: Personal Account, bout 2005

Copyright © 2009 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Not much in the neighborhood of threat to life or limb, but VERY amusing and well-written! What I DON'T understand is Tequila in a cake. Gaaaak! :-)Thanks, Chad!

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I would have loved to have seen the look on the ER doctor when you described this incident to him. Thanks, Chad!

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