Dave's Travel Adventures: Baking Cookies in the Car

NOT A NORMAL TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY (AGAIN)

This isn’t really a tale of where I went, but another way to document my insanity of something quirky I did. Sure, it was done on a whim, and there were a number of chuckles about it from my co-workers, but this is interesting enough that it should be remembered. I’m sure this will be brought out as evidence during the trial which finally commits me to the rubber-walled room.

HOW A FUNNY COMMENT BECOMES A CHALLENGE

Everyone comments when it’s hot they say they could “fry an egg on the street.” The office park for my work is filled with pavement, so the heat reflects off there all day. And keeping in mind, this is Texas, so except for a brief two week period, it’s always hot. But this year, not only had it been hot earlier, but the temperature had been much higher than normal. We were marking the days off on the calendar as we’d gone through yet another day-in-a-row of being over 100 degrees. Keep mind there had been hardly any rain, so you could imagine the drought which was happening.

After returning to work from the Fourth of July holiday weekend, someone made the “fry an egg” comment, and I said I wondered if anyone had actually done that. Inspiration then kicked me in the head. Why don’t I make a real attempt at seeing how hot it was by doing a fun little science experiment.

I announced that I was going to bake cookies in my car.

Of course, that was met by the usual round of laughs when I say something mildly off-base. But I’d be serious in my attempt, so I needed to figure out how I was actually going to do this. I normally would keep my windows open during the day, so my car wouldn’t so freakin’ hot when I get ready to leave. So for a couple days, I left Argent buttoned up to get an idea of how hot it’d be inside. With that information in hand, the best way to make cookies is to use batter already made. Once I’d gotten everything I needed, I was ready to start the experiment.

AND SO IT BEGINS

I bought a tube of Nestle chocolate chip cookie dough (the kind you keep refrigerated in between consuming it directly from the package). I placed some chunks on a non-stick baking sheet the night before, so they’d be ready for the next morning. (Always do the prep work when you have the time to do, as it makes your life so much easier.) So the experiment would commence on 26 July 2011, which incidentally was the 42^nd consecutive days of over 100 degree weather. Thanks to Douglas Adams, that number was special to me, and I knew not to panic.

Mum taught me when making cookies to roll the dough up into a ball, so the cookies bake into a nice circular form. Right after I took that picture, I decided to take batter off the foil, and have them directly on the pan. Figured the heat would be better that was. The foil was used to cover them only for the journey to work. As I like to travel with the windows down, I didn’t want road dust and other crap embedded in them. I actually planned to eat some of these cookies at the end of the work day.

I parked a few spaces down from my normal spot, so I’d be away from any shade cast by the few small trees that dot the area. Once at the parking lot, the sheet was placed on the front dash in order to get the morning sun heating up the car. I guess in a strange way, that was “pre-heating the oven.”

I made sure this was done on a day where I didn’t have any hearings, so I could get up and leave my desk to check on these whenever I thought it was appropriate (as opposed to just doing this on break time). After about an hour (circa 9 am) I went out to check on them. The batter had started to cook, as evident by the nice perfect spheres loosing shape. I also noted the back window seemed to be getting more sunlight than the front, so I quickly opened up Argent just to swap the location.

I’d brought my actual camera with me today too in order to document this. While some pictures were taken with the phone, the better quality ones were obviously with the camera.

I told my Team Lead (Iris) about the experiment, and at first she thought I was kidding. Since it was nearing 11.00 (the time of my first break), it was a good time to go out and check on them. With Iris as my witness, she saw the cookies were actually baking. Their appearance was still a bit doughy, as the inside of my car wasn’t as hot as an oven. I hoped “lower temperature over long time” would balance out.

I did notice some oil had oozed from the batter, and collected on lower portions of the pan. I attributed that to the dough slowly warming up as it was being cooked (where this would evaporate off in a 350 degree oven). From looking at the way that was pooling up, I figured I may not want to actually eat these. I’d eat the batter right out of the fridge (even though it had raw egg product in it), but I decided it wouldn’t be wise to eat these. I’m sure it wasn’t hot enough to kill any bacteria which might come from raw eggs warming up.

I ate lunch at my normal 1 pm, and of course showed people what I was doing here. It was like bringing people to a side-show attraction. I’m sure the placement of the pan could be better to get more sunlight, but I wanted to keep it level as much as possible. I still considered this a “first round” of the experiment. I’d take what I learned from here and apply it to the next rounds. Placing a thermometer inside would’ve been good to do get an actual temperature reading.

So at 5 pm, the end of my work day came. You could bake cookies inside a car. When I opened Argent’s door, I was greeted by the cookie smell. The scent lingered inside, and it was a pleasant scent. What a fabulous air freshener I’d come up with. I turned on the air enough to cool the inside of the vehicle on the drive home, but not enough to dissipate the smell.

I knew I wasn’t going to eat these things, but I’d proven at least the concept worked. You could bake cookies inside a car. I set these out on the kitchen table to get some additional shots to document this. The smell of the cookies still lingered, as did Stoop, who expected he was going to get a treat. Chocolate chip cookies are not for dogs. Sorry, buddy.

The last shot of these I took was a nice close up to show while they were still a batter consistency, they’d begun to brown nicely. I decided when I’d do this again, instead of balling the dough up, I’d cut them in thin slices. I figured that would allow them to cook more evenly, and thoroughly. Also, I’d have to figure out a way to “pre-heat” the car, and then place the pan inside. I’m not sure how I’d do that without loosing the heat building up in the car, or having the batter achieve room temperature (and thus having the oil ooze out again).