Cherry Chocolate Cookie Spoon Pudding
A no-cook camp dessert built from crushed chocolate cookies, dried cherries, and melted chips.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 149
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 10 min
- water
- 60 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.
- Dessert
- No cook
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Vegetarian
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Chocolate sandwich cookie crumbs | 3 cups | crush at home in a bag with a bottle |
|---|---|---|
| Powdered milk | 1/2 cup | stands in for cream cheese frosting |
| Powdered sugar | 3/4 cup | |
| Semi-sweet chocolate chips | 1 cup | |
| Dried tart cherries | 1 cup | chopped; replaces canned pie filling |
| Coconut oil or butter powder | 2 tbsp | helps the chocolate loosen |
| Cold water | 1/4 cup | |
| Salt | a pinch |
Method
- Put the cherries in a mug or bag with 2 tbsp of the cold water and leave them ten minutes. They need to plump or they will stay leathery in the finished pudding.
- Stir the powdered milk, powdered sugar, and salt into the remaining water in a bag or pot until it is a thick paste with no dry lumps.
- Set the chocolate chips and coconut oil in a small zip bag, seal it, and hold it in a pocket or between your hands until the chips go soft. In the sun on a warm rock works too. No stove needed.
- Squeeze the softened chocolate into the paste and stir hard.
- Add the cookie crumbs and cherries with their soaking water. Stir until it is uniform and stiff.
- Divide into cups and let it sit fifteen minutes to firm up. It sets as the chocolate cools.
The original is a fridge dessert built on canned pie filling and tubbed frosting, neither of which survives a trailhead. Powdered milk and powdered sugar do the frosting’s job, and dried cherries rehydrated in a tablespoon of water do the pie filling’s. The result is drier and less sweet, which is the right direction for something you eat out of a cup with a spoon.
The chocolate is structural, not decorative. As it cools it locks the crumbs together, so the mix goes from wet sand to something that holds a spoon. Soften the chips gently with body heat rather than any real heat, because seized chocolate will never bind and you cannot fix it in camp.
Packing
Crumbs, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and salt go in one bag at home. Cherries in a second bag, chips and oil in a third. The chips need their own bag because you are going to soften them in it.
Variations
- Freeze-dried strawberries in place of cherries, crushed slightly.
- A spoonful of instant espresso in the powder mix makes it read darker.
- In cold weather, skip the softening step and just chop the chips fine; the pudding stays crunchier.
https://www.thisisnotdietfood.com/cherry-oreo-no-bake-dessert