Baking lesson learned

I tried making blueberry crumb bars last night. They turned out great, but I felt the need to add something. The crust on top wasn't enough - it needed a streusel topping.

So I whipped up a quick topping (flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter) and added it to the top of the mostly cooked bars.

Five minutes later, the topping wasn't crispy yet, and I was worried about over-baking my bars. So I changed to heat from 'bake' to 'broil', and set the timer for 3 minutes while I was folding laundry.

In hind sight, that was a really stupid idea.

Three minutes later, with my timer beeping at me, I emerged from the laundry room to a smoke-filled kitchen. I turned off the oven, scurried around the house opening windows, doors and calling Drew for help.

Did I mention that it was 9pm, 50-ish degrees outside and we were trying to get the kids in bed?

So my adventures in tinkering with a perfectly good recipe resulted in a freezing cold, smoke filled house. Lesson learned: Don't broil baked goods, even if you are trying to achieve a perfect crust without over-baking the rest of the item.