pumpkin crunch pick me up

I thought my dogs were being extremely messy with their water jugs, they were sent to their kennel. It turns out, my kitchen was flooding thanks to my dishwasher, right smack dab in the middle of me making dinner. I really can't explain how or why, but water was coming out everywhere (I have a theory that it's because we had to get matching appliances for our new house instead of the builder's already installed white appliances, thus, it's my husband, the pseudo plumber's fault), but as I rushed to clean up the counters, a glass bottle fell to the floor and shattered everywhere. By the time I picked up the big pieces of glass, my husband came home to start clearing my cleaning supplies from under the sink. In the span of 2 hours we managed to lose the cap off of the milk and spill it all over the fridge, handwash the full load of dishes that were supposed to be going in the dishwasher, give two doggie baths, clean two doggie kennels, lose a leash, sweep, vacuum, mop the floor only to do it all over again, break then fix the garbage disposal (totally unrelated to the leaky whatever you call it). I joked that I should buy another lottery ticket and my husband jumped to the door and said, "I'm locking it and we're strapping ourselves to the couch, who knows what else could happen tonight."

To ease my frustration, I'm baking something. I don't think what I'm making can really be classified as baking; I totally just dumped a few things in a bowl, gave it a mix, dumped more things on top and put it in the oven. It took more time and effort to melt butter and whip some heavy cream for the topping. While I was dumping, my oven stopped preheating three times, just on it's own. So while I'm typing this, I keep walking over to the oven so I can make sure it doesn't turn off just all of a sudden. What the heck is going on with my house? With me?

Anyway, I've been making Pumpkin Crunch Cake for fall and winter potlucks since my parents allowed me alone time in the kitchen. To the left, a picture of it in the dish, it is essentially an upside down cake. The recipe itself probably isn't even blog worthy but considering how the evening is gone, it's something you can't physically mess up, unless of course, the oven dies on you. In the last few years, if someone else is running the Thanksgiving showdown, I always make dessert, pumpkin pie with homemade crust and homemade roasted pumpkins, pecan pie, even pumpkin cheesecake you know typical t-day fare. But, if everyone's coming over to my house, this is what I make, I can do it the night before put it in the fridge and forget about it. For a prettier presentation, you could probably divide the batter into 2 springform pans. If you're like me, you always have eggs and butter in the fridge, so keeping the rest of the ingredients in the pantry is a cinch. The most important thing is everyone seems to like it. One day, I'll figure out how to make it from scratch, without the cake mix, with roasted pumpkins, but for now, especially tonight, why mess with a sure thing?