Solar Cooking

What do you get when you add a heat wave to the end of the summer and a mom that's scraping the bottom of the barrel of fun but educational things to do with her daughter on the cheap?

You get SOLAR COOKING!  

I searched the net for the best (and easiest and cheapest) way to create a solar cooker.  The one I chose was...wait for it...the dashboard reflector solar cooker.  I know, I know, I couldn't believe it either.  Apparently, you buy one of those silvery screens that go in the dash of your car, twist it into a cone shape and voila!  Instant solar cooker!

I found a lot of sites for solar cooking recipes, but here's the one (click here) I settled on.   We tried the beer bread, which was great!  The process, uh, it went pretty well, for the most part.

 Here's what you'll need: some flour, salt, baking soda, beer, a bowl and a oiled loaf pan.  

You'll also need a sun reflector, a large black pot with a lid, and a thermometer 

wouldn't hurt to know how hot your "oven" is.

 Mix everything together in a big bowl.

 We decided to kick things up a bit and add a little cheese in and on top of the batter.  

This particular cheese is called "buffalo wing" cheese.  It's essentially a Monteray

Jack" with spices - but no heat.  

(We are in Wisconsin after all...  

I think it's in some statute book somewhere that as a resident you are expected 

to at least attempt adding cheese to everything.)

  I grab my extra-large canner that's been "preheating" with the oven thermometer,  place the bread inside, and pop a lid on it.  The canner is sitting inside sun reflector that I've circled up.  Right now it's a little over 200 degrees.   

After you've sealed it up, it needs at least 2-3 hours to bake in direct sunlight.

(I'll interject here that getting that thing into a cone shape was not as easy as it sounds.  It took me about 30 minutes of absolutely intense wrangling!  Halfway through it was more a "I will not be defeated by a piece of mylar" expedition.  I nearly lost the battle.  No lie.  Thankfully, there's no photographic evidence of me wrestling with an inanimate object.)

 

Here's our finished bread.  Beautiful, huh?  Well, I have to be honest here.  We put it out at noon, and didn't take it in till 4pm.  The picture you don't see is me putting it in the traditional oven and browning the bread.  So - it worked, but didn't.  But very educational and at the end of the day, we had some bread that was delicious and cheesy!  

The bread sliced just fine after it cooled, but I have hard time waiting for that. 

Next time, I think I'll try to wrangle my reflector so that it aims more of the sunlight into the pot.  I'm not sure it was able to be very efficient because it wasn't a true cone-shape.  It was more a walled circle.  

We still had lots of fun and certainly learned a lot. I think we'll try it again and might even attempt to  build the box solar cooker.

Have you tried solar cooking? 

I'd love to hear your tips, suggestions, successes and successful failures!