The Toyota oven

If you know a Texan, you probably know it's been a bit toasty here. You probably know because said person has been mentioning the weather every few minutes and posting way too many car thermometer photos on Facebook. There's a reason for this. 110 is hot. It's hard to think of anything else when 110 is on the other side of the door. Simple, really.

Texas is making this the hottest summer on record, and the days of 110 degrees aren't about to end soon. So we're finding ways to make it work. We're exercising at 5 a.m., we're taking cold showers three times a day, we're keeping the blinds closed, and we're baking cookies in our cars.

ERCOT claims DFW is about to go off the electric grid and is threatening rolling brownouts. Please use less electricity, they're begging. Fine, who wants to use an oven in this weather anyway? We'll just use our Toyotas.

A crowd of neighborhood kids came over for the activity. Since I'm a teacher, I had to start them with a bit of educational hypothesizing. I sat the squirts down in the living room and asked all sorts of questions, like whether they thought we should use a large car or a small one, a light one or a dark one, how long the cookies would take, and what would their texture be when finished. Questions answered and time estimates given, we were ready.

Thing 2 helped me put the cookies in the oven. It was tough being in the heat for those 30 seconds, but he powered through. The other kids were too chicken and stayed inside.



Then began the waiting. Most of the kids guessed that cooking time would be around 30 minutes. It was a pretty logical guess, really. Since cookies take around 10 minutes in a 350° oven, the kids figured they'd take around three times as long in a 150° car. Unfortunately, they were wrong, and the afternoon wore on, kids came and went, piano lessons were taken, pet hamsters were played with, books were read, and the cookies still had not finished.

Finally, after about three hours, the cookies were done. Since it was 6 p.m. now, and a whole two degrees cooler, a larger crowd went out to retrieve them.



As my little students predicted, the cookies were soft and chewy instead of crispy, and the chocolate chips had sunk to the bottom of the cookies. They still tasted pretty good.



After supper, we finished up the day with some car-baked cookies topped with ice cream while I introduced the kids to the creepiness that is "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." Lollipops, anyone?