A North Carolina TikTok creator turned a sweltering 12-hour work shift into an unconventional baking experiment, leaving trays of raw cookie dough and cinnamon rolls in his car to see whether the heat could cook them. TheBenStory (@thebenstory) documented the experiment in a series of videos in July 2026.
In the first TikTok video, he said temperatures had reached 101 degrees with a heat index of 110. “I’m working a 12-hour shift,” he said, explaining that he planned to leave three trays in his car containing chocolate chip cookie dough, sugar cookie dough, and cinnamon rolls.
“The car is gonna get hot enough to cook these things more than likely,” he said. “I’m gonna play Mythbusters with this.”
TheBenStory checked in at the four-hour mark.
Ben returned to the car four hours later to check his experiment. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said after inspecting the trays. He said the cinnamon rolls looked the most promising and suggested that the food might actually be baking.
At the eight-hour mark, the creator returned. Ben described the conditions as extremely hot and said the baked goods appeared to be changing. He then observed that the food appeared to be cooking. He noted that the bottom row was not progressing in the same way.
@thebenstory Stay tuned for the results! #MythBusters #Car #Cookie #SummerHeat #FYP
♬ original sound – TheBenStory
After 12 hours, Ben returned to check the results. The cinnamon rolls looked promising, and he said they smelled baked. “Oh, they’re baked,” he said. “Well, mostly baked.”
The sugar cookies did not fare as well. Ben said they had not cooked completely through, although they appeared close. He also acknowledged that the cinnamon rolls remained doughy. Ben ultimately described the experiment as “not a bad little project.”
The experiment demonstrates that a parked vehicle can become extremely hot, but Ben’s results do not establish that the food reached a safe cooking temperature. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that raw flour can contain harmful bacteria and says cooking is necessary to make flour and raw-egg dough safe to eat.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) also recommends cooking egg dishes to 160 degrees and using a food thermometer to verify the temperature. Ben’s experiment also does not show that the dough remained within recommended food-storage conditions.
So in the end, Ben’s TikTok may show that extreme heat can change raw dough inside a vehicle. It does not prove that the resulting food was safe to eat.
