Beth and the Mystery of the Strangely Smoking Oven

Case closed on this one. I have used my oven only once for real purposes (two other times which I'll discuss momentarily), and while it was still preheating both the carbon monoxide detector and fire alarms started going off. Luckily, the apartment has lots of windows, so I opened them up as much as possible and things were quiet for the duration of the baking. However, I didn't like to think that I was breathing trace amounts of gas, and the thought of baking something in February with all the windows gaping was not appealing.

I tested the oven again a few days later by turning it to the same heat with nothing inside. I had to wait fewer than ten minutes before alarms were going off again. That settled it: this wasn't a fluke. Either something was burning inside the oven or else there was a leak. Either way, I was annoyed. A leak was bad news, and if there was something burning inside the oven, I didn't feel obligated to clean it; I had just moved in and felt I should have at least reasonably clean appliances to start off with.

I called the management company and the snippy receptionist put me through to the gruff maintinence guy. He told me immediately that I need to clean the oven. "But it looks fine," I protested, hoping to get him to come out and look at it anyway. "Buy some oven cleaner, scrub it out real good, and call me again if it's still acting up," he said, in the kind of tone that told me he was sure I wouldn't be calling again.

Resignedly, I stopped by the hardward store on the way home. I changed clothes, armed myself with rubber gloves, and opened up the oven to peer inside. My kitchen is tiny, and really getting in there to scrub was going to require some serious contortion if I was going fit in the small space between the oven and the cupboards. Everything looked fine. Then I opened up the drawer at the bottom of the oven, figuring I might as well do something about that too while I was at it, and this is what I saw:

What I had figured was a handy storage compartment turned out to be a warming drawer. The new cupcake tins, with paper labels still affixed, and cupcake lining papers in their plastic container, had not stood up well to the heat. Who knew? I removed them, then turned the oven up again and waited half an hour. No so much as a beep from anything on the ceiling.

I was suddenly really, really glad the maintinance guy didn't come out.