Backcountry Chocolate Cake Mix
A dry chocolate cake mix built at home, baked in a dutch oven at camp.
- calories
- 390
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 111
- protein
- 6 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 35 min
- total time
- 45 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 2 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 1 1/2 cups | turbinado works, and it packs looser than white |
| Dutch-process cocoa | 3/4 cup | natural cocoa will taste sharper with baking powder |
| Baking powder | 1 tbsp | |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Powdered whole milk | 1/2 cup | replaces the fresh milk |
| Powdered eggs | 3 tbsp | stands in for 2 large eggs |
| Vegetable oil or ghee | 1/2 cup | ghee keeps without a cooler |
| Vanilla extract | 1 tsp | a small dropper bottle |
| Water | 1 1/4 cups |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down. You want coals, not flame.
- Grease the dutch oven, bottom and an inch up the sides.
- Dump the dry mix in the oven. Pour in the oil, vanilla, and 300 ml of water.
- Stir until no dry pockets remain. Do not beat it. Overworked batter bakes tough.
- Lid on. Set the oven on a ring of about 8 coals and put 16 on the lid. That splits roughly a third under, two thirds over.
- Rotate the oven a quarter turn every ten minutes, and the lid the opposite way, or one side scorches.
- Check at 30 minutes with a twig in the center. It comes out clean, it is done. Pull the coals off the lid and let it sit ten minutes before cutting.
Boxed mix is mostly flour, sugar, and cocoa with leavening. Mixing it yourself costs ten minutes at home and lets you fold the wet ingredients into the dry bag list too. Powdered whole milk and powdered eggs are the change that makes this a camp recipe: both go in the same bag as the flour, so nothing needs a cooler and there is one container to open.
Heat placement is the whole game with a dutch oven. Coals underneath cook the bottom fast and burn it faster; most of the heat belongs on the lid so the cake rises and sets from above. Rotating in opposite directions evens out the hot spot that every fire has. Dutch-process cocoa is worth carrying because it is neutral, and the baking powder here is doing the lifting on its own.
Packing
Whisk flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, salt, milk powder, and egg powder together at home and seal it in one bag. Squeeze the air out. Oil and vanilla travel in leakproof bottles, upright, in a side pocket.
Variations
- Stir in a handful of chocolate chips or chopped dried cherries before the lid goes on.
- Skip the milk powder and use coconut milk powder to keep it dairy-free.
- No dutch oven: bake it in a foil-lined pot with a lid, buried in coals, and expect a denser slab.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/homemade-chocolate-cake-mix-recipe