..:: The Dashboard Cookie Experiment ::..

It’s mid-August, and summer has finally come to New England.  So what do we do?  We bitch about the heat.  I chose to spit in Mother Nature’s eye, and came up with some tasty results.

Last month, Lifehacker had a piece on using the heat that builds up in a parked car on a summer day to bake some cookies.  I thought it was a cool idea, but was skeptical, and decided to give it a shot yesterday.  And you know what?  It totally fucking worked.

Armed with some aluminum foil, I wrapped a Guinness tin tacker I had hanging on my wall, and bought some Toll House chololate chip cookie dough (the flat, pre-cut 24 dough cube kind).  I pre-heated the oven as it were by running the defroster on high heat on my way back from the store with the dough.  I spaced the dough on my impromptu baking sheet, placed two pot holders on the dashboard and the sheet on top of those.  I closed the door and began the wait.

10:40 AM

My 2000 Ford Windstar begins its career as an oven.  My thought at this point is “worst case scenario… my van smells really good.”

11:45 AM

Cookies begin to take shape.  Note the subtle butter streaks… the tilted position actually is making for a marginally healthier cookie.

12:30 PM

Almost two hours in, and we’re getting somewhere.  The cookies are beginning to firm up.  The tops are slightly crisp, the bottoms are still squishy.  The process is working.

1:30 PM

Now these are some dashboard cookies.  I had zero illusions about the quality of the result.  Ain’t no way I was expecting nice toasty brown edges on these suckers.  They’re just like what you’d pull out of your oven if you pulled them out with three minutes left to go.  The chocolate chips were super melty… the whole thing would be great in a bowl with vanilla ice cream.

It is possible to bake cookies in your car on the hottest day of the year.  If I had to do it all over again, I’d use a proper dark colored cookie sheet, a sub compact car and sugar cookie dough.