Bananas for Solar Oven Banana-Nut Bread
There is something extraordinarily satisfying about building something out of scraps that are laying around the garage and then cooking something tasty in it. That is exactly what I've done and it has been a long, drawn out process but finally it paid off.
I don't really remember when I started my solar oven (see "long"..."drawn out" above) but it has been close to a year if not more. It all began with a cardboard box solar over which was...unsatisfactory. Now, that is not to say that your carboard box solar over is unsat. I'm only speaking for mine. Deciding that something more was required I set about creating one using an old piece of glass from a screen door as my starting point. A year, several newspapers, some tin foil and a can of spray paint later - we have an oven.
Enough about the oven. Let's talk food. We had some overripe bananas in the kitchen so I figured I'd go with an easy banana-nut bread recipe. That way if it went south, which it very well could have, I wouldn't have wasted much time, effort or ingredients. The recipe I used was from sunoven.com and you can find it here.
http://sunoven.com/sun-cooking-usa/how-to-use/recipes/
I don't know if this had any significant effect on the results but I used a muffin pan instead of a regular loaf pan (some knucklehead used it on the grill and messed it up). What I do know is that these muffins were really good and they were baked using the power of the sun! I mean how cool is that?
I don't really remember when I started my solar oven (see "long"..."drawn out" above) but it has been close to a year if not more. It all began with a cardboard box solar over which was...unsatisfactory. Now, that is not to say that your carboard box solar over is unsat. I'm only speaking for mine. Deciding that something more was required I set about creating one using an old piece of glass from a screen door as my starting point. A year, several newspapers, some tin foil and a can of spray paint later - we have an oven.
Enough about the oven. Let's talk food. We had some overripe bananas in the kitchen so I figured I'd go with an easy banana-nut bread recipe. That way if it went south, which it very well could have, I wouldn't have wasted much time, effort or ingredients. The recipe I used was from sunoven.com and you can find it here.
http://sunoven.com/sun-cooking-usa/how-to-use/recipes/
I don't know if this had any significant effect on the results but I used a muffin pan instead of a regular loaf pan (some knucklehead used it on the grill and messed it up). What I do know is that these muffins were really good and they were baked using the power of the sun! I mean how cool is that?
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| Ready to bake! This was the second batch. Hence the empty spot. |
The recommendation in the recipe is for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I kind of forgot about them and let them go for closer to an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes. However, the finished product was truly delicious. My oven operates at about 250 degrees this time of year (mid-March). Someday I might add some more reflectors and stuff but today is not that day. Anyhow, the muffins came out nice and hot with steam pouring out of them when I broken the first one open.
If you've never tried a solar oven or are skeptical about whether or not they work, let this be your proof. I had my doubts but God's giant heating element in the sky came through and not a single mW was used to cook these muffins. If you haven't tried cooking with the sun give it a shot. It's fun and the results are tasty!
God bless,
Christian
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