Many people have experimented with cracking raw eggs onto sidewalks on scorchingly hot days just to see if they would cook. But a baker in Arizona just one-upped all of them by making a popular dessert with the heat of the sun and absolutely no oven.
A Phoenix resident successfully baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies inside their car this past week amid a record-breaking heat wave in the area. The searing temperatures have topped 110 F every day for the past couple of weeks, spurring excessive heat warnings from the National Weather Service, azcentral.com reported.
The baker said they were inspired to try baking cookies in a car because of the persistent scorching heat. And as a bonus for all the curious fellow bakers, they shared all the interesting details and pictures of the experiment in a Reddit post this week.
The baker, whose Reddit handle is u/8andahalfby11, set up a cookie sheet under the rear window inside a car and left balls of cookie dough there to bake. More than four hours later, they had fully baked—albeit slightly pale—chocolate chip cookies. A meat thermometer showed that the temperature inside the car was 122.5F at the start of the baking process, while the tray itself measured 164F at the end, the baker said.
“They tasted like cookies. I’m used to oven-made cookies being a bit softer in the middle, but these had pretty similar consistency throughout,” they wrote.
Some Redditors were concerned about the baker’s health and safety after consuming cookies baked in such a nontraditional way. But u/8andahalfby11 tried to mitigate any health risks by using a premade Pillsbury cookie dough that’s designed to be eaten raw. They shared an update after the original post to let other Redditors know they weren’t experiencing any strange symptoms from the cookies.
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“12 hours later, still fine, no fever, no digestive weirdness,” they wrote.
While some Redditors still weren’t sold on the safety of the experiment, there’s no denying that they were still intrigued. The post received more than 130 comments from other Redditors who were both amazed and horrified at the success of the experiment amid the wild weather.
“I’m amazed and feel your pain at the same time. This is really crazy,” one user commented.
“As a fellow Phoenix resident… I love the science but I hate that this is even possible. The parking lot at my job has no shade at all so I know exactly what these cookies feel,” another wrote.
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Zoe Strozewski
Zoe Strozewski is a News Writer for Eat This, Not That! A Chicago native who now lives in New Jersey, she graduated from Kean University in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Read more about Zoe
