Warning: Do not try to bake a cake in a glass bowl unless you are ready for a mess

Last Sunday I was making my mom's birthday cake, a big lemon chiffon. The recipe said to bake it in a tube pan, but I thought using my big glass mixing bowl would give it a cool dome shape. I was in my kitchen in Omaha, preheated the oven to 325 degrees. About 25 minutes in, I heard this loud pop from the oven. I opened the door and the whole glass bowl had just shattered. There was cake batter and glass shards everywhere inside the oven and on the floor. I had to turn everything off, let it cool, and spend over an hour carefully cleaning it all up with a shop vac. The worst part was I had to start the whole cake over from scratch with a proper pan. Has anyone else had a dish just explode like that? What kind of bakeware is actually safe for sudden temperature changes?

3 comments

3 Comments

andrewh432mo ago

That sounds like a huge mess to clean up. Did you put the cold glass bowl straight into the hot oven, or was it maybe already scratched? Some older glass just can't handle the shock.

amy9751mo ago

My grandma's casserole dish exploded in 2012 and I'm still finding bits of green glass in the kitchen. I guess I learned thermal shock the hard way.

benk262mo ago

Yeah, the "older glass just can't handle the shock" part hits home. I once tried to reheat some pasta sauce in a fancy glass jar I saved, straight from the fridge into a pot of simmering water. It made a sound like a gunshot and left me picking tomato and glass out of my burner coils for a week.