I love using my MacBook Pro while working outdoors, but its underside does get hot sometimes, especially when the outside temperature peaks. As such, I have to always make sure to keep it raised up a bit, in order to keep it cool.

Normally, I use Rain Design’s wonderful iLap at my desk, which features an angled anodized aluminum base to support a laptop computer and keep it cool. However, while this ($45 to $63) base sure is stylish, I find it a little too bulky to fit into my laptop bag at times, so it usually just stays on my desk.

Recently, I came up with a more cost effective and pretty ingenious (I think) solution to keep my laptop cool when I found myself without a much-needed cooling base while traveling.

I simply purchased a cooling rack – the kind used to cool off cookies, pies, and cakes – and set my laptop on that.

While this three dollar purchase gets me a number of odd looks when I first take it out of my laptop bag – it’s thin enough to fit behind my laptop and add extra support to it – people around me quickly see the “clever logic” behind it, and often ask me for the “name of the specialty store” where I found this “chrome device”, so they can buy one.

They’re usually even more surprised when I tell them they can find a number of sizes wherever kitchen gadgets and baking equipment is sold, or buy a pair at Amazon for about six bucks. Plus, you can use it to make cookies.