Sun Oven, Part II: Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is the second part of my series on the Global Sun Oven. You can read part one here.
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The next thing I did after I unpacked my Sun Oven and familiarized myself with it was to put it through the pre-use cleaning regimen. That involved heating a pot full of soapy water for about 2 hours and then scrubbing down the inside of the chamber and on the outside around the gasket.

Soapy water heating up. By the end of the two hours,
the glass was completely fogged over with condensation. 

Even after all that, my Sun Oven still had a lingering chemical smell. I pushed my doubts to the back of my mind and decided that the first recipe I would try would be chocolate chip cookies. After all, I had successfully baked chocolate chip cookies in my mini-van in July. This would be a great test of the merits of the Sun Oven.

While I made a batch of standard chocolate chip cookie dough, I set my Sun Oven outdoors to preheat. It would easily have reached 300 degrees in the cooking chamber within 20 minutes but I forgot to latch the glass lid. Oops!

Once the oven thermometer finally read 300 degrees, I slid the cookies into the chamber.

Cookies in!

A less than impressive amount of cookies, eh? Well, I had a hard time coming up with an appropriate pan that would fit into the oven. I settled on using this nonstick cake pan but I could only fit three cookies in at a time. If you are going to get a Sun Oven, I highly suggest that you invest in some cookware. Brownie pansor these toaster oven sheet panswould be ideal. The cool thing about the Sun Oven is that because it is  uniform in temperature throughout the entire chamber, you can stack the pans by crisscrossing them and fit several in at one time. They will all cook at the same rate. In my case, the tiny amount of cookies I baked on my solitary cake pan turned out to be a good thing. More on that in a bit.

It took about 20 minutes for the cookies to brown and look like they do when I pull them from the regular oven. They looked great, but what would closer inspection reveal?

The end result

The first thing I noticed was the texture. They came out very crispy. When cookies get this brown in my regular oven, they end up chewy, which is the way we prefer it. Lesson #1: Obviously, I can't use the level of browning as an indicator of doneness in a Sun Oven. Next time, I would take the cookies out about 5 minutes earlier.

I took a big bite of a cookie. It tasted like I had eaten a spoonful of baking powder - it was a bitter, chemical taste. I can't even describe how repulsive it was and, needless to say, I ended up spitting it out. I baked the same cookie dough in my regular oven and they came out perfectly, so obviously the chemical smell from the Sun Oven had permeated the cookies baked inside it.

This was disappointing to say the least, especially when you compare the results from my mini-van experiment.

Mini-Van vs. Sun Oven

Outside temperature and season:   110 degrees, late July     vs.    75 degrees, mid-September
Time it took to bake the cookies:  2 hours    vs.    20 minutes
Appearance:   pale    vs.    browned
Texture:   soft, a bit crumbly    vs.    crispy
Taste:   Kids loved them    vs.    Ended up in the trash

Obviously the Sun Oven is a powerful tool. It certainly has the capability to harness the sun's energy, even on cool days. The chemical taste, however, is unacceptable.

I did the cleaning routine again and the chemical odor has diminished yet further, though it has not completely disappeared. The next thing I cook will be in a covered pot so the odor can't affect the food. I'm hopeful that I'll get this to work yet!

Coming Soon: Sun Oven, Part Three: Can the Sun Oven Work like a CrockPot?

Can You Use a Mini-Van to Bake Cookies?

Like much of the nation, it has been darn hot around here the past few days. Day after day of 100 degree+ temperatures must have caused me to crack, because this afternoon I got the notion to try and bake cookies in my van. You've probably seen people on the news frying eggs on the sidewalk during heat waves. An egg just wasn't going to cut it; I wanted chocolate chip cookies.

A quick Google search led me to the Baking Bites blog where someone had already tried baking chocolate chip cookies in her car.  I "preheated" my van while I made the dough. I pulled my van out of the garage and pointed it towards the west-southwest, where it would get the maximum amount of afternoon sun. I used the Baking Bites recipe as a starting off point, adding in a few drops of double-strength vanilla extract and using regular size chocolate chips instead of the mini-chips specified.

Dished out and ready to bake

The Baking Bites recipe uses a slice and bake method to form the cookies. I chose to forgo this, relying instead on a cookie scoop like this to dish out equal amounts of dough. I gently flattened each cookie with my hand, hoping that would help the cookies bake evenly. The author of Baking Bites blog also lined her cookie sheet with parchment paper. I skipped this and simply sprayed the pan with cooking spray. The reason? I've watched enough videos about solar ovens to know that dark-colored cookware works best and white parchment would reflect the sun's energy. My old aluminum cookie sheets would have to do.

I placed a double layer of towels on the dashboard, placed my cookie sheet on top, shut the door, and crossed my fingers. The temperature outside was 100 degrees according to the National Weather Service, a brutal 108 degrees according to the thermometer on my deck and the perspiration on my body.


The baking begins!


Unfortunately, I didn't think to place a thermometer inside the van, so I'm not sure how hot it eventually got in there. I checked the cookies (from the outside) every 30 minutes. I didn't want to let the heat escape so I kept the door shut.

At thirty minutes - the cookies have spread out and look moist

One hour has elapsed - not much has changed, but they have spread out a little more

I'll spare you the photo at an hour and a half. It pretty much looked the same as at one hour. At this point I was wondering if this would really work.

When I went outside at two hours, I went ahead and opened the door and touched a cookie. To my utter shock, they were done!

Pallid, but cooked!

How do cookies baked in a mini-van compare to those baked in an oven?

When you cook in a mini-van (or any solar oven, for that matter) things don't brown quite like they do in a standard oven. The cookies on the left were baked in my oven; the ones on the right came out of the van. As for the taste test, I much preferred the ones from the oven, though I wouldn't turn my nose up at the mini-van ones. The Thinker actually preferred them.

 So there you go. You CAN bake in a mini-van.

Using Your Food Storage: Spicy Raisin Flats

Before I got married to Hubby Dear, I went through my Mom's recipe collection and copied all her best recipes into a little cookbook of my own. Not surprisingly, these old-fashioned favorites are some of my most frequently used recipes.

And then there's this recipe:

My copy of the recipe for Spicy Raisin Flats

I vaguely remember my Mom making these cookies when I was a kid, but it has been at least 20 years since I've cooked or eaten a Spicy Raisin Flat.  I remember them as dense, sweet, bar cookies full of warm, spicy flavor. And the best thing? They can be made entirely from food storage.

My original copy of the recipe was missing a few key pieces of information: how long they cook, at what temperature they cook, and the quantities of the glaze ingredients. I just winged it and it turned out fine. I've re-written the recipe for clarity and to reflect my "winging".

Warm out of the oven

My kids absolutely LOVED these cookies. The Thinker said they taste like Christmas.  See if you agree.

Spicy Raisin Flats

Spicy Raisin Flats

1 c. raisins
1 c. water
1 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. ground nutmeg
1/2 t. ground cloves
1/2 c. shortening
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1 egg (or 1 T. dry egg powder + 2 T. water)
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 t. baking powder
1 c. powdered sugar
1-2 t. milk (can be reconstituted dry milk or even water in a pinch)

Preheat the oven to 350. Combine raisins and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer until only about 1/4 c. of juice remains. Stir in cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together shortening, both types of sugar, and egg. (If you are using powdered eggs, just add the water at this point.)

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and powdered egg (if using).

Mix the flour mixture in with the shortening mixture. Then add in the raisin mixture. Spread on a greased, rimmed cookie sheet and bake until set, about 15 minutes. These cookies are meant to be moist and soft, not crispy.

In a small bowl, slowly add just enough milk to the powdered sugar to make a thin glaze. Ice the cookies while they are still hot. The more glaze, the better these cookies taste. Allow to cool, cut, and serve.

Using your Food Storage: No-Bake Cookies

OK, so they're not exactly exotic, but No-Bake Cookies taste great and use a ton of food storage ingredients. And if the power goes out, I'll still be able to prepare this easy treat on my cooktop.

My mother-in-law's recipe is the best I've ever tried. The one my Mom used while I was growing up tended to be finicky about weather and humidity. This one always turns out great regardless of the barometer. I like to use crunchy peanut butter instead of creamy for extra peanutty goodness.





No-Bake Cookies

2 c. sugar
1/4 c. cocoa
1/2 c. milk (or powdered milk, reconstituted according to directions)
1 stick butter (I keep pounds of butter in my freezer at all times.)

Mix together the above ingredients in a large saucepan and let come to a boil. Remove from heat and add:

1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. peanut butter
3 c. quick oatmeal (It's not very good with regular rolled oats.)

Stir together and drop on waxed paper in whatever size dollops you prefer. Allow to cool and then enjoy.