eCard #100 – If I knew you were coming I’d’ve baked a cake.

I was in Bolivia during my most recent birthday. I celebrated by having a cerveza with Javier on the shores of Uyuni salt lake. Now I’m not looking for any sympathy since it was an “exotic” locale and Javier is a nice guy to hang out with. But one crucial birthday necessity was absent.

Cake.

Not just any cake. THE cake. The traditional family vanilla cake with coffee butter cream icing. That one.

Here is my recipe.

Step 1: Replace the frayed power cord on the hand mixer. Surprisingly, I had never taken one of these apart before. They’re pretty simple. It was old enough that it had screws facilitating access to the innards. But, interestingly in this age of “replace rather than repair”, it was cheaper to buy an extension cord and cut off the receptacle end rather than just buy a cord with a plug end.

Step 2: Pre-heat the oven, mix the batter, pour it into cake pans and slip it into the oven to await that cake baking aroma.

Step 3: Precisely six minutes later, open the windows to allow the smoke belching from the oven to clear the kitchen. The oven thermostat of the 50 year old Hotpoint wall oven was shot, or so I surmised.

Step 4: Mourn the resultant charred cake.

Step 5: Become horrified at the price of a new oven. $1500.

Step 6: Pull the oven out of the wall to assess the possibility of repair. This required un-wiring it from a junction box in the ceiling of the basement, removing the oven door and sliding the oven out to balance it precariously on a foot stool to remove the 20 screws retaining the exterior panels. 

Inside was an envelope with $5000 in cash…. No. Just the schematics which gave me some hope in doing a repair.

But assessing the state of the internal wiring (dried, cracked) led me to:

Step 7: Research more about new ovens. Discover there are “standard” widths of 24, 27 and 30 inches, but this dimension refers to the external dimension of the face of the oven (approximately), and there is nothing standard at all regarding the width of the oven inside the wall and the required cut-out in the wall. Any new “standard” 24 inch oven will fit completely in the existing cut-out and look like Hell (let alone be a small oven). Any new “standard” 27 inch oven will require widening and/or lengthening the height of the existing wall cut-out.

I’d just need a new wall.

Step 8: Refer back to the schematic and identify likely culprits in the oven’s failure. I found the part number for the suspect capillary thermostat and poked around for it online. The manufacturer, GE, discontinued the part (some decades ago, I suspect). Part # 262D955G16 – seems GE had the same drawing number scheme as we had at Westinghouse. There was an Eaton solenoid that I think had also failed preventing the self-cleaning feature to operate, but that is a project for another owner….

There were no new thermostats to be found either in North America or the UK. I found a half-dozen similar units used on eBay and a new unit that looked similar, but the lengths of the capillary tubes were too short. I then discovered two used units with the exact same part number. They looked about as old and crummy as my broken unit, but for 68 bucks I went ahead and ordered the best looking of the two.

Step 9: Install the “new” thermostat and reinstall the oven – there was no way to test it other than to put it all together and give it a go. Miraculously, it worked. Testing the dial setting temp of 350F against a thermometer showed they were just 10 degrees off.

Step 10: Pre-heat the oven, mix the batter, pour it into cake pans and slip it into the oven to await that cake baking aroma. Better result this time.

Step 11: Cool the cake, make the icing, and ice the cake. Oh, yeah. Lick the beaters.

Happy (belated) Birthday to me!