Campfire Pannukakku with Blueberries
A thick Finnish oven pancake baked in a dutch oven lid over coals. Batter is looser than you think it should be.
- calories
- 480
- weight
- 8 oz
- cal / oz
- 60
- protein
- 14 g
- serves
- 3, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 45 min
- water
- 600 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Dessert
- Campfire coals
- Dutch oven
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Eggs | 3 | carried in a hard case in the cooler |
|---|---|---|
| Whole milk | 600 ml | or 600 ml water whisked with 6 tbsp whole milk powder if you have no cooler |
| All-purpose flour | 250 g | about 2 cups, measured at home |
| Sugar | 2 tbsp | |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Butter | 2 tbsp | plus a little more for the pan |
| Blueberries | 1 to 2 handfuls | fresh, or dried and soaked ten minutes in warm water |
Method
- Burn the fire down to coals. You want steady, even heat and no flame licking the pan.
- Whisk the eggs, milk, sugar, and salt in a pot or bowl until the sugar dissolves.
- Add the flour in thirds, whisking each addition smooth before the next. Lumps here stay lumps.
- Melt the butter in the pan and pour most of it into the batter, leaving a film behind. Whisk it in.
- Rest the batter 10 to 15 minutes while the coals settle. This is not optional if you want the custardy middle.
- Set the dutch oven lid upside down on the grill grate over the coals, or use a flat skillet. Butter it and toss the blueberries around until they start to give up juice.
- Pour the batter over the berries, 2 to 3 cm deep. Cover with foil or the pot itself.
- Bake 20 to 25 minutes, turning the pan a quarter turn every five minutes so one hot spot does not scorch it. It is done when the edges pull away and the center is set but still soft.
- Cut in wedges and eat straight out of the pan.
Pannukakku is a baked pancake, not a griddled one, so it lives or dies on even heat from underneath and enough trapped heat above. An upturned dutch oven lid over settled coals gives you both. Flame does not — it scorches the bottom before the center sets.
The batter looks wrong. It is thinner than pancake batter and it should be: the high liquid ratio is what makes the middle set custardy instead of cakey. The rest before baking lets the flour hydrate, which is the other half of that texture. This one needs a cooler for eggs, milk, and butter, so it is a car-camping recipe. The powdered-milk and dried-berry version in the variations travels without one.
Packing
Flour, sugar, and salt go in one bag, premeasured. Eggs in a rigid carrier, butter and milk in the cooler. Berries in a rigid container or they arrive as jam.
Variations
- No cooler: whole milk powder and dried blueberries make the whole thing shelf-stable. Texture is slightly less rich.
- Jam on top instead of berries in the pan. Cloudberry if you can find it, lingonberry if you cannot.
- Cut the sugar and skip the berries, and it works as a base for savory ham and cheese.
https://petromax.de/blogs/its-all-about-food-1/finnischer-pancake-pannukakku