Did you know chocolate chip cookies were the first food baked in space?
How astronauts baked the first chocolate chip cookies in space using a special zero-gravity oven
In 2019, Italian astronaut for the European Space Agency, Luca Parmitano was one of the astronauts who experimented with baking chocolate chips cookies at the International Space Station. The cookies were baked in a special zero-gravity oven, as an experiment by researchers looking at ways of making long-distance space missions more comfortable.
In the International Space Station Bake Off, they found that the cookies took much longer to bake than on Earth. The first cookie was baked for 25 minutes and came out undercooked. Another cookie was in the oven for 120 minutes and then cooled for 25 minutes, and the other was baked for 130 minutes and cooled for 10 minutes. And these two turned out to be just right!
The cookies were baked in a prototype oven built that uses electric heating elements similar to a toaster oven. The oven could reach temperatures up to 177°C (350°F) and could bake one cookie at a time.
The cookies were sealed in clear individual baking pouches, which enabled the astronauts to keep an eye on the baking process, and enjoy the aroma of cookies baking. But the astronauts didn’t get to taste them because they were sent back to Earth for testing!
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