Cinnamon Oat Cookie Bake
Snickerdoodle dough with oats in it, mixed in a bag and baked in a dutch oven at camp.
- calories
- 390
- weight
- 3.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 122
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 10, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 40 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
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Foil packet
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 2 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Instant oats | 3/4 cup | quick oats, not rolled or steel cut |
| Cream of tartar | 1 1/4 tsp | this is what makes it a snickerdoodle |
| Baking soda | 1/4 tsp | |
| Cinnamon | 1/2 tsp | for the dough |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Brown sugar | 1/2 cup | |
| White sugar | 1/2 cup | plus 2 tbsp for the topping |
| Cinnamon for topping | 2 1/2 tsp | |
| Powdered butter or shortening | 1 cup equivalent | solid shortening travels without a cooler |
| Powdered whole egg | 1 egg worth | about 1 tbsp powder |
| Vanilla extract | 1 tsp | small dropper bottle |
| Water | 3-4 tbsp | to reconstitute the egg and butter powder |
Method
- Bury coals or build a bed of them. You want roughly 8 coals under a 10-inch dutch oven and 16 on the lid, which lands near 375F.
- Line the oven with foil or grease it well with shortening.
- In the mixing bag, work the sugars into the shortening until there are no lumps. Cold shortening fights back, so warm the bag in your hands first.
- Add the egg powder, vanilla, and water. Squeeze the bag until it is smooth, then add the dry mix and knead just until no flour shows. Overworking it makes hockey pucks.
- Mix the topping sugar and cinnamon in a mug. Roll walnut-sized balls of dough, coat them, and set them in the oven with a finger of space between.
- Lid on, coals on top, 20 to 25 minutes. Pull them when the edges color and the centers still look wet. They finish setting off the heat.
- Bake in two rounds if the oven is crowded. Refresh the top coals before the second batch.
Cookies at camp usually fail on the dairy. The original calls for two sticks of softened butter and a fresh egg, neither of which survives a weekend in a pack. Shortening and powdered egg do the same structural job, and shortening is more forgiving of a hot spot in the coals than butter is.
Cream of tartar is the ingredient not to leave behind. It is what gives a snickerdoodle its tang and its chew, and without it this is just an oat cookie. The oats matter for a different reason: they absorb some of the moisture and keep the dough from spreading into one sheet when a dutch oven runs hotter than you meant it to. Pull them early. Coals keep working on the bottoms after you take the lid off.
Packing
Combine flour, oats, cream of tartar, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and both sugars in one gallon freezer bag at home. That bag is also your mixing bowl. Shortening in a screw-top jar, egg powder and topping sugar in small bags, vanilla in a dropper bottle.
Variations
- No dutch oven: press the dough flat in a foil packet and bake it on a grill grate over low coals as one big cookie, then break it apart.
- Swap a quarter cup of the flour for milk powder if you want a richer, softer crumb.
- Raisins or chopped dried apple stirred in at the end hold up fine.
https://mealswithmaria.site/oatmeal-snickerdoodle-recipe