Yes, the burnt cake experience was quite aggravating!
I make home-made cake and frosting for all of the birthdays, every year...1st time I ever burned one
. Really ticked me off, too, because I was under a time schedule, and never did get to bake the cake. I wouldn't have had time to decorate it. Darn....I had such a cute idea too. So, the girlie ended up with 2 very delicious store bought round cakes. It was fine, but I just missed the love and care of making them myself. *sigh*
Now, burnt cake is HORRIBLE, and burnt POPCORN is very SMELLY, but THE WORST burnt food story of ALL TIME is when I left for the library, having forgotten that I put eggs on to boil. 2 HOURS later, I came back to the apartment (Yes, we were newlyweds...married not even a month
) to find BLACK smoke ROLLING out from under the door.
I knew immediately what I had done! So I rushed in, and did what any ding dong would do...grabbed the GLOWING HOT pan (it was glass...literally glowing), ran down the hall screeching, and threw the whole thing down the garbage chute! It's wonder I didn't burn the whole building down! Garbage burns, duh. Not to mention, the glass pot was near the melting point, so I don't know how nothing else in the apartment caught on fire.
Now, burnt eggshells are indescribably HORRIBLE! And the smoke had permeated the entire apartment, including our brand new furniture, delivered one week before. All of our clothes. The drapes. It was rank. And oh, did I mention that we were entertaining 25 people the next day???? Dave was in Specialty training at the Air Force Base in Denver Colorado, and we were having over the whole class and spouses for a party, in a mere 24 hours.
This was before 'Febreeze' was introduced. So, we bought 5 dozen unscented candles to burn off the smell. And we vacuumed, and powdered, and sprayed (I don't remember, probably Lysol or something) for hours. Oh, it was awful. But what do you do? Fortunately, it was a tiny 1 bedroom apartment, so the smell was "mostly" eliminated by party time, when I lit the SCENTED candles...and just told everyone what had happened. I was a good laugh, and didn't seem to damper the party any.
I don't think we ever got the burnt eggshell smell out of the drapes completely. I threw them away when we moved 6 months later.