When I was a kid, the hottest toy (no pun intended) was an Easy-Bake Oven. I begged my parents incessantly for one. They finally gave in – probably because they got sick of hearing me talk about it – and got me one for my birthday.I couldn’t wait to whip up some culinary masterpieces.
My first – and last – attempt at using it was an utter failure. Instead of a delicious, golden brown cake, I got a glob of goo in a puddle of raw batter. I tried to put the cake back in the Easy-Bake Oven to finish baking it, but the 100-watt lightbulb quickly burned out. An attempt to replace the bulb broke the oven. I ended up with an inedible disaster and a broken toy.
But who thought that a single 100-watt bulb could successfully bake something anyway?
Fast forward to today, when master chef and food genius Alton Brown has come up with the perfect alternative to the Easy-Bake Oven. He used his culinary knowledge and the backing of Popular Science to develop the “Mega Bake.” The giant contraption uses a conveyer belt to move food back and forth through the beams of 54 PAR64 units. It produces 54,000 watts and outputs an incredible 1,026,000 lumens. At 640 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s hot enough to perfectly cook a pizza. Check out how Brown does it in the video below, and keep your eyes peeled for the 2:06 mark when you can catch a glimpse of the SmartFade console used to run the lights!
The Mega Bake combines two of my favorite things: baking and lighting. And now Brown has added one more of my faves to the mix: theater. He’s taken the Mega Bake and his show, Alton Brown Live: Eat Your Science, on the road, even hitting Broadway.
Have you ever tried cooking with light? We’d love to hear about it! Send your stories to blog@etcconnect.com, and you could be featured on our blog!