Most of us have probably seen a You Tube video or some news report when it’s very hot out showing someone trying to fry an egg on the road or on a car dashboard. They’re good indicators as to how hot surfaces can get, plus their kinda fun to watch. Well during this recent hot streak this past Saturday, when we really didn’t have anything else to do I thought it would be an interesting excercise to try something similar with my family.
In my case though I didn’t want to use an egg. First of all it’s been done many times before and second the only car we have with a black dash is the spiffy Chrysler 200 Convertible which I had for the week as part of my Enviro Dad Test Drive series – and there was no way I was going to try to fry an egg in a Press Fleet car. So instead I decided to try something more family friendly and a bit more unique. For my experiment with the sun I wanted to see if I could bake cookies using store bought cookie dough.
The video below documents the experiment from start to finish.
While this particular experiment didn’t result in fully baked cookies, I realized through the process that doing so is entirely possible. We’ve had hotter days than the day I chose to try the experiment and I know that hotter days lie ahead as well.
In the end I’m not sure if this was something to be happy about or sad. It was a positive experience in that the kids got to see a vivid example of the sun’s power but in a way I also found it sad since temperatures like these are not something my part of the world should be getting used to. It was deliberate that I started to bake the cookies in my front yard on top of my baked front lawn since the comparison between increased heat and drought causing lawns to burn and being able to bake cookies using the sun was an ironic comparison that had to be made.
In the end though, while it was fun to try I’d be completely content if the only way I was able to bake cookies was inside a regular oven and not the external oven that is becoming all too frequent.
