No oven? No problem!
Arizona park rangers redefined “sun-baked” after cooking banana bread atop their dashboard amid the sweltering triple-digit heat wave scorching the US since late last month.
“It’s that time of year again! Cooking in the car, cue theme music!” wrote officials with the Saguaro National Park by Tucson, where they performed the unorthodox cooking tutorial, as detailed in a Facebook post.
According to the post, they put the loaves on at around 11 a.m. on June 28, when the mercury had hit 97 degrees, which meant the dashboard clocked in at a searing 163 degrees.
Fast forward to 2 p.m., and the outside and dashboard temps had reached 105 and 211 degrees, respectively — the latter being the equivalent of a “cool oven temperature.”
At that point, the tops of the chocolate-freckled bread turned golden, per the car-beque pics.
By the time the rangers took this desert dessert out of the car at around 3 p.m., the confection’s exterior had been browned, although it was still a “bit squishy on the inside,” per the post.
Having tried the experiment on other foods, the rangers deduced that cookies were “the most ideal option” for a solar oven on wheels.
This car cooking method is also likely more effective — albeit messy — for frying eggs than the much-disputed sidewalk method, whose success is possible but unlikely given that walkways tend to only reach 145 degrees (eggs fully cook at 158 degrees).
Viewers were impressed with the cooking tutorial, with one fan writing, “I bet it smells amazing in the car.”
“When is the dashboard cookbook coming out?” wrote another.
However, the experiment doubled as a public service announcement on the perils of leaving kids and animals in a hot car.
“You know what’s not an ideal thing to cook in the car? People, and pets,” they wrote. “Based on the previous 27 years of data from the National Safety Council, an average of 37 children die each year from heat due to being left in a vehicle. And hundreds of pets due to the same thing according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.”
They added, “If you hear a cry, bark, or similar from a parked car, take action right away. It only takes 10-20 minutes inside a hot car to become life-threatening.”
This comes as a record-breaking heat wave continues to pound the US.
The Northeast’s hot and humid temperatures are expected to persist with the New Jersey mercury slated to reach over 90 degrees for the fourth day in a row today.
On Sunday, the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning — its highest alert — for about 36 million people, or about 10% of the population as the thermometer hit triple digits in large swaths of the country.
