Some throwbacks and a requiem

I haven't posted in several days, but that doesn't mean I haven't been baking! I just haven't made anything "new," per se.

At work, we had a chili cookoff last week. We had 17 different pots of chili. That's a LOT of chili. I thought my co-workers might need something sweet after all that meat and spice, so I brought in Schmoopie Pies. They were gone very quickly, so I think it was a good choice.

I also made some Blueberry Muffins last week just because I felt like baking, and they sounded good. I'd forgotten how yummy that crumb topping is. This recipe is a great standard blueberry muffin recipe to keep around.

But over the weekend, something horrible happened. I was attempting to make these yummy Chocolate Chip Cake Bars to take to a Super Bowl party, and my oven officially went on the fritz. I am well acquainted with how long my oven usually takes to bake things, and these just kept getting browner and browner on the outside, yet refused to bake on the inside. This also happened when I tried to make some Classic Brownies a week or two ago. I tried to give my poor, old oven the benefit of the doubt after the brownie debacle. Maybe the brownies were a fluke, I thought. Maybe I didn't mix something properly.

But, alas. It wasn't me. It wasn't the brownies. My oven simply can't work hard enough to bake through a whole batch of bars/brownies/cakes anymore.

On the one hand, it's good. We've really needed a new oven for a while. I just have a hard time parting with appliances until they really and truly bite the dust. This little oven kept chugging along, so who was I to decide she was too old to do the job?

Plus, we can get a WHITE one, so it will finally match our refrigerator and dishwasher. How modern of us.

But still. I'm sort of sad. This oven has given me countless hours of great service. It has baked desserts for soldiers, work potlucks, holidays, and birthdays, as well as endless "just because" sweets.

It will be hard to say goodbye.

By the way: I couldn't go to my Super Bowl party without something sweet in tow, so I did improvise. Check back for a future post on that.