Canned Pear Cobbler in a Pot
Canned pears, oats, and pancake mix cooked into cobbler over a camp stove. No oven required.
- calories
- 250
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 45
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 35 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- Breakfast
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Dutch oven
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Canned sliced pears in syrup | 2 15-oz cans | peaches or fruit cocktail work the same; keep the syrup |
|---|---|---|
| Pancake mix | 1 cup | |
| Old-fashioned oats | 1 cup | |
| Brown sugar | 1/2 cup | loose, not packed, or it goes cloying |
| Cinnamon | 2 tsp | |
| Ground nutmeg | 2 dashes | |
| Ground clove | 1 dash | a dash is the limit, it takes over |
| Coconut oil or shortening | 1/4 cup | stands in for butter, no cooler needed |
| Vanilla extract | 1 tsp | optional, a small dropper bottle |
Method
- Open the cans and drain the syrup into a cup or bottle. You want all of it, roughly 1 1/4 cups.
- Mash the oil with the sugar and vanilla in the pot until it is one paste.
- Stir in the oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove, then work in the pancake mix until it looks like damp crumbs.
- Pour in the reserved syrup and stir to a thick batter. Scrape the pears in and fold once, no more.
- Set the pot over the lowest flame the stove will hold, lid on. Cook 20 to 25 minutes without stirring.
- Check at 20 minutes. The top should be set and springy. If the bottom starts to smell dark, pull it off and let the residual heat finish the middle.
- In a dutch oven, use coals instead: about 8 under, 16 on the lid, 40 minutes.
The original bakes at 350 for 50 minutes, which nobody has in camp. A covered pot over a very low flame does the same job in half the time, because the pot is smaller and the batter is shallower. The lid traps steam and cooks the top; the flame cooks the bottom. Low heat is the whole trick. Anything above a simmer scorches the sugar before the middle sets.
The canned syrup is the liquid, so you carry no extra water and waste nothing. Oats give the batter enough body to hold the syrup instead of letting it pool. Butter is out with no cooler, so coconut oil or shortening does the fat work; both are stable in a jar for weeks. Skip olive oil, it fights the fruit.
Canned fruit is heavy, which is why this is a car-camping and basecamp recipe. Eight servings out of two cans is the payoff.
Packing
Combine oats, pancake mix, sugar, and spices in one zip bag at home. That leaves two cans, a jar of oil, and one bag to open in camp.
Variations
- Swap the pancake mix for a cup of flour with 2 tsp baking powder.
- Cake mix works instead of pancake mix, but then drop the brown sugar.
- No stove for 25 minutes? Skip the heat and eat it as a raw oat and pear mash. It is not the same, but it is food.
https://theprepared.com/blog/pantry-recipes-canned-pear-cobbler