Dutch Oven Apple Cider Cake
Cider boiled down to syrup, baked over coals, and rolled in cinnamon sugar while it is still hot.
- calories
- 330
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 94
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 35 min
- total time
- 50 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
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Apple cider | 2 cups | shelf-stable bottle, no refrigeration until opened |
|---|---|---|
| Ground cinnamon | 2 tsp | 1 tsp for the cider, 1 tsp for the coating |
| Ground cloves | 1/4 tsp | |
| Ground nutmeg | 1/2 tsp | |
| Whole wheat pastry flour | 2 cups | |
| Baking powder | 2 tsp | |
| Baking soda | 1/2 tsp | |
| Kosher salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Sugar | 1 cup | 2/3 in the batter, 1/3 for the coating |
| Butter | 8 tbsp | 6 for the batter, 2 melted for brushing |
| Dried whole egg powder | 3 tbsp plus 6 tbsp water | equals 2 eggs; real eggs work if you have a cooler |
| Vanilla extract | 1 tsp |
Method
- Get a bed of coals going. You want about 20 briquettes or an equivalent pile of hardwood embers.
- Pour the cider into the dutch oven with 1 tsp cinnamon, the cloves, and the nutmeg. Boil it down over the coals until it is roughly 1 cup. Pour it into a mug and wipe the pot out.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in one bag or bowl. In another, cream 6 tbsp butter with 2/3 cup sugar, then beat in the egg powder slurry and the vanilla.
- Add the flour and the reduced cider to the butter mixture in alternating splashes. Stop stirring the second the dry streaks disappear.
- Butter the dutch oven, scrape the batter in, and set the lid on. Put 8 coals underneath and 14 on the lid. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, turning pot and lid a quarter turn every 10 minutes.
- Pull it when a twig comes out clean. Let it sit five minutes, brush the top with the last 2 tbsp melted butter, and dust it with the remaining sugar and cinnamon mixed together.
- Cut it in the pot and eat it warm.
Apple cider doughnuts are a fryer trick, and nobody is hauling a fryer to a campsite. The part worth keeping is the cider reduction. Boiling two cups down to one concentrates the sugar and the acid, so the cake tastes like apple instead of tasting like flour that met an apple once. Doing that step in the same dutch oven you bake in saves a pot and a wash.
Whole wheat pastry flour is the whole point of the gentle mixing. Its bran cuts gluten strands but also soaks up liquid fast, so an over-stirred batter goes to brick. Mix until it is barely combined and no further. The butter brush and cinnamon sugar at the end are not decoration; they are the crust the fryer would have given you.
Packing
Premix the flour, leaveners, and salt in one bag at home. Sugar, cinnamon, and the spice blend go in small jars. Butter and egg powder ride in the cooler bin; the cider bottle stays sealed until you cook.
Variations
- Bake it in a foil-lined mini muffin pan on a grill grate if you want the doughnut-hole shape.
- Swap half the cider reduction for a splash of bourbon added off the heat.
- No egg powder: two real eggs from the cooler, used the first night out.
https://www.bowlofdelicious.com/whole-wheat-apple-cider-donut-muffins