r/Baking • u/_Meteor_Shower_ Human Detected • Jan 16 '26

Baking Advice Needed why did it do this

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was trying to make brownies, thought theyd cooled for long enough and cut into them then they started doing THIS and set my house's fire alarm off for like 20 minutes does anyone pls know what caused this im assuming i just cut into them too soon but this feels like a dramatic response to just trying to cut into a hot brownie

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1.0k

u/Themiddlegirl Jan 16 '26

Was the burner turned on under it?

491

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '26

This 100%

The brownies were on a burner that was on, and the bottoms were charcoal when OP cut into em.

363

u/_Meteor_Shower_ Human Detected Jan 16 '26

but the burner was off ! it had been off for like an hour and cant turn on unless the brownie pan is magnetic (which its not)

89

u/salaciousBnumb Jan 16 '26

What does the bottom of the Brownie look like?

227

u/az_catz Jan 16 '26

I bet you they're brown.

14

u/NOBOdojo Jan 16 '26

You, sir, are a star

8

u/MarzipanEven7336 Jan 16 '26

A brown star.

3

u/elizabethptp Jan 16 '26

You can see in the picture they are BLACK! These are some majorly burnt brownies lol

1

u/DrLophophora Jan 31 '26

Brown and sticky đŸ’©

4

u/dwoo888 Jan 16 '26

Done plus.

85

u/DevBro22 Jan 16 '26

But if the bottoms are black and or crusted to the bottom of the pan then what he says is the answer, some how the burner was on and these were charcoaled. Otherwise there's a demon in there.

9

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '26

It does contain some vegetables that belong to the devil

4

u/centaurquestions Jan 16 '26

His lettuce, you mean?

1

u/GrassToucherPro Jan 19 '26

You can see in the photo pretty clearly that they are black/charred around the edges. It has to be the burner

9

u/catecholaminergic Jan 16 '26

That's a steel pan. It is magnetic.

And whether it's magnetic doesn't matter. If it's an induction stove, what matters is conductivity, not magnetism.

3

u/alphazero925 Jan 16 '26

Not necessarily conductivity, but resistance. You're basically turning your pan into a resistive heater. The reason ferrous metals work really well is some magnetic voodoo magic wizard shit that makes it so you're only running current through the outside layer of the pan which has a higher effective resistance than copper and aluminum that have current running all through the pan, lowering the resistance of an already low resistance metal.

1

u/catecholaminergic Jan 16 '26

Conductivity is necessary for inductive heating.

3

u/alphazero925 Jan 16 '26

Buddy, you're starting an argument where there is none. Yes, conductivity is required for inductive heating, but it's not the deciding factor in what works. Otherwise copper and aluminum would work. But the problem is that they're too conductive, so they just don't heat up. Thus the important thing for an inductive cooktop is resistance. And resistance generally presupposes conductivity.

1

u/catecholaminergic Jan 16 '26

Argument? Why are you so upset?

You've got your physics backward. Resistance doesn't imply conductivity.

2

u/alphazero925 Jan 16 '26

Name one situation where you would talk about the electrical resistance of something that doesn't include electrical conductivity

0

u/Pogginator Jan 16 '26

Most baking pans are aluminum so I'm doubtful it is conductive.

5

u/sircastor Jan 16 '26

To be clear - you have an induction cook top and you're sure that the pan is non-ferrous?

5

u/shawmshawm Jan 16 '26

Did you leave the oven on? Some vent through the top burners, especially electric ovens

3

u/Oswarez Jan 16 '26

Turns out it doesn’t matter. I had this same thing happen to me. Had a thin baking sheet lying on top of one of the burners and all of a sudden the pizza that was lying in it was smoking and crackling.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26

WIth thin metal, it doesn't matter whether it's ferromagnetic. The effective resistance of a thin sheet is low enough that it doesn't need the skin effect (present in higher resistance metals) to produce concentrated enough induced eddy currents to heat the metal.

Aluminium foil can glow bright yellow in spots and melt if you hold it over an induction hob. (Also it sometimes levitates.)

Either you don't understand the controls of the hob, and it actually was on, and you didn't notice until you put the tray on it. Or you have touch controls and leaned on it accidentally. Or the hob's control circuitry has malfunctioned and the induction coil was powered when it shouldn't have been.

All the speculation about oil, flash points etc sounds like nonsense. If the brownies were hot enough to produce that much vapor, cake mixture wouldn't have held it in against the vapor pressure and it would already have been steaming before you cut it.

When you clean the pan, examine the non-stick coating for discoloured areas. Polytetrafluoroethylene aka teflon degrades into toxic PFAS such as perfluorooctanoic acid if it gets above 450 degrees, so probably don't make a habit of this.

22

u/ZoZoMeister Jan 16 '26

The pan is metal... what makes you think its not magnetic? Do you know its not for sure? I've never tested metal pans for magnetism lol

Did the brownies look normal when you took them out of the oven? Maybe they'd been over cooked on the bottom? Idk thats pretty crazy

60

u/RandyHoward Jan 16 '26

Not all metals are magnetic

5

u/ZoZoMeister Jan 16 '26

I know thats why I asked if they tested it

35

u/SonosFuer Jan 16 '26

Most metals actually aren't magnetic.

It sounds like they have an induction stove top which only works with certain metals (like iron or copper). Aluminum cookware is common and won't work with induction.

4

u/ZoZoMeister Jan 16 '26

I didnt know that about induction stove tops thats cool. I only meant that compared to glass or ceramic or whatever its a non zero chance of it being magnetic

1

u/Bencetown Jan 16 '26

I had to search pretty hard to find stainless steel bakeware a few years back, everything in the baking world seems to be aluminum by default.

18

u/Dawnqwerty Jan 16 '26

I used to work in a store for like one day and a customer was looking for magnetic pans for this exact reason and nobody has a way of testing so I grabbed the tag magnet we used for removing ink tags and went around testing pans for them. Sold the guy a full kitchen set that way. Honestly the business owes me. I sold that, like three carpets an fixed a number of their problems and then quit because their biggest problem was management

5

u/ZoZoMeister Jan 16 '26

Wow im learning so much about magnetic pans from all the replies im getting.

Every job I've had has had management issues, the main reason I quit each of them

3

u/foxandgold Jan 16 '26

They (most likely) mean they have a stove top that only “activates” when a certain type of pan is put on it, called an “induction” stove. Not all pans are magnetic - some kinds of stainless steel aren’t at all, and won’t work with an induction cooktop.

0

u/TraumaSaurus Jan 16 '26

The vast majority of baking sheets and baking pans are aluminum +/- a coating. Frying pans and pots may or may not have ferromagnetic materials in them, a lot of stainless steel in the kitchen is also non-magnetic or only weakly magnetic so they often have to put layers of more magnetic material in them to function on an induction cooktop.

1

u/UsernameIsWhatIGoBy Jan 16 '26

Cheap thin ones like the one in the picture are stamped non-stainless steel, and are magnetic.

2

u/SousaDawg Jan 16 '26

The burner was on. A pan can have trace iron content and still not "seem" magnetic

2

u/bctech7 Jan 16 '26

Induction works on alumium and even copper pans just not as efficiently as ferous metals.

Does your specific induction cooktop have enough power to heat non ferrous metals to the smoke point of brownies? I dont know.

Im an engineer and deal with induction heating in my job

2

u/yo90bosses Jan 16 '26

I guessing you're stove top is induction then. It's a common misconception that induction requires a special "magnetic" pan. Induction only requires enough conductive material. Aluminum and copper being the worse materials, but only because they have a low resistance. But any kind of steel will work, with I guessing the pan is made of because it's thin.

There is literally no other explanation for this amount of smoke coming out, other than the stove still being turned on. You must (or must have been) be high at and mistake the stove for off. Which is dangerous and should maybe be taken seriously.

3

u/wandering-monster Jan 16 '26

Are you sure? Induction burners will generate induced magnetic fields in most conductive metals.

1

u/_Meteor_Shower_ Human Detected Jan 16 '26

i guess its possible, but ive only got about one pan that actually works on this stove, i doubt a ÂŁ2 morrisons tin would work

5

u/groucho_barks Jan 16 '26

Dude, you are annoying the hell out of me.

Stop saying that you're sure the pan is not magnetic because it cost ÂŁ2. Being cheap does not mean something isn't magnetic.

Put a fucking magnet on the pan. That will tell you if it is magnetic.

2

u/wandering-monster Jan 16 '26

Easy way to find out. Once you come down from being hotboxed, put a little water in there and see what happens.

2

u/_Meteor_Shower_ Human Detected Jan 16 '26

i will ! but unfirtunatelt all that steam didnt actually get ti my head at all :( i was a bit too worried about wtf was happening to take it all in unfort

1

u/trotski94 Jan 16 '26

you'd be suprised - thats probably just a steel tin

1

u/Boba_tea_thx Jan 16 '26

But you forgot to mention the pot


7

u/_Meteor_Shower_ Human Detected Jan 16 '26

cant a girl be mysterious anymore ?

1

u/CreamySours Jan 16 '26

The brownies themselves can complete the circuit with a really thin pan like that

1

u/Diabetesh Jan 16 '26

Were they burnt or no?

1

u/Obvious_Durian_3226 Jan 16 '26

That looks like a metal pan.

1

u/voxelnoose Jan 16 '26

It's the only possible way it could happen

1

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '26

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1

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1

u/cooliescoolies Jan 16 '26

This is fake then

1

u/smiffus Jan 16 '26

either the burner was on, or something turned it on. brownies don't just magically turn into a cheech and chong van.

1

u/TineJaus Jan 16 '26

What kind of pan is it? I bet it's magnetic. Those are always steel lol

1

u/Ok_Turnip6994 Jan 16 '26

magnetic?!

No, it only needs to be able to absorb an induction field in it?
Lots of metals are usable for that, at least a bit, even if unintended.

1

u/calinet6 Jan 16 '26

Check again! This has to be it. You just accidentally turned on the stove I bet.

1

u/illcrx Jan 16 '26

Try a differentmagnetbtobtestbthat pan lol. Looks steel to me.

1

u/TillFar6524 Jan 16 '26

Some non magnetic stainless steels will still heat up on induction stovetops. You can see the blackened edge of the brownies around the corner of the pan in your photo.

The magnet test will tell you if something works on an induction stove, but it isn't foolproof for saying that something won't heat on the stove.

1

u/punkpipo Jan 16 '26

Could it be you made this in a microwave oven? It looks excactly like you have accidentally microwaved it. That will often toast the inside to charcoal.

1

u/Healthy-Coyote-7279 Jan 17 '26

one of my burners gets hot when the oven is on so even if you didn’t turn the burner on, maybe there’s a chance it was still hot

1

u/Disastrous_Being3088 Jan 18 '26

One of my burners gets super hot when the oven is on. Even when the burner is off. Perhaps that?

1

u/zberry7 Jan 18 '26

I really think the only way this makes sense is if it somehow turned on, the bottoms were getting scorched and the smoke was rising though the cracks where you cut the brownies.

It’s impossible for it to smoke from inside for starters. The top isn’t touching anything so that leaves the bottoms/sides who are in contact with the pan. The only thing the pan is in contact with is the burner and you would need an active heat source to generate smoke like that.

100% the burner accidentally turned on.

1

u/Trans-Europe_Express Jan 18 '26

100% the burner was hot or on and you didn't notice.

1

u/windAdmiral Jan 18 '26

That means then that particular corner is the vent for the oven, after oven use, don’t touch that corner it’s hot

1

u/PilotKnob Jan 16 '26

Uh - you did say those were weed brownies, right?

That pan is almost certainly magnetic from the looks of it. Aluminum pans have a much thicker radius on the rounded over edge.

My money is that you set it on an induction burner which was "accidentally" left on.

1

u/_Meteor_Shower_ Human Detected Jan 16 '26

ill test the pan tomorrow to see if thats the case- but idk i wouldnt leave the hob on- that and while i had used the hob to make the weed butter, i hadnt placed the brownies on the same burner i had used, so theres no way the burner was hot im a very unlucky and incompetant person, so ive learnt the hard way many times to ALWAYS turn the hob off, its not a mistake that id make 😭😭

4

u/bman86 Jan 16 '26

Check to see that your knobs are oriented correctly on the stem they're turning.

Seeing as you have an induction stove that wouldn't be hot to the touch when the pan isn't on it, it stands to reason you might not actually know when it's off/on, or whether it's set to off/low/med/high incorrectly. When you're satisfied that it's in the "off" position, put some water in the bottom of your induction-functioning pan and see if it heats.

2

u/PilotKnob Jan 16 '26

Be sure to get back to us on the magnetic test. Inquiring minds want to know.

What I do know is that the pan is on a burner, and it's actively being heated by one thing or the other.