Dutch Oven Brownie Cookies with Hazelnuts
Cocoa, brown sugar, and toasted hazelnuts baked over coals in a lidded pot.
- calories
- 230
- weight
- 1.8 oz
- cal / oz
- 128
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 14 min
- total time
- 29 min
- water
- 90 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
- Snack
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 1 cup | |
|---|---|---|
| Brown sugar | 1 cup | press out the lumps at home |
| Cocoa powder | 1/3 cup | unsweetened |
| Powdered whole egg | 3 tbsp | equals two eggs, rehydrated |
| Baking powder | 1/2 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Heat-stable chocolate chips | 3/4 cup | the baking kind that holds its shape; ordinary chips melt into streaks |
| Hazelnuts | 3/4 cup | chopped, skins rubbed off |
| Neutral oil | 1/2 cup | |
| Water | 90 ml |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down. You want coals, not flame.
- Stir the oil and water into the dry mix in a bowl or a heavy freezer bag. It will look like thick mud. Do not thin it out.
- Fold in the chips and hazelnuts last so they stay whole.
- Line the dutch oven with parchment or foil. Drop twelve heaped spoonfuls with space between them.
- Lid on. Put about eight coals under the oven and eighteen on the lid. Top heat is what makes them set.
- Bake 12 to 14 minutes. Rotate the oven a third turn at the halfway mark, and the lid the other way, or one side burns.
- Pull them when the tops have cracked and the centers still look soft. They firm up off the heat.
This started as a home baking recipe, which means an oven and cold butter. Neither travels. Oil replaces the butter and works better here anyway, since it stays workable at any camp temperature, and powdered egg carries the binding without a cooler. The dough is deliberately stiff. A wet dough spreads into one sheet in a dutch oven and burns at the rim.
The coal ratio is the whole recipe. Roughly two-thirds of the heat on the lid and one-third underneath bakes the tops before the bottoms scorch. Heat-stable chips matter for the same reason: regular chocolate is liquid long before the cookies are done, and you end up with a smear instead of pockets. Hazelnuts hold their crunch through the bake and give the cocoa something to work against.
Packing
Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, egg powder, baking powder, and salt in one bag at home. Nuts and chips in a second bag, oil in a bottle. Carry parchment cut to the pot's diameter.
Variations
- Swap half the hazelnuts for dried cherries.
- A teaspoon of instant coffee in the dry mix pushes the cocoa darker.
- No dutch oven: bake them in a foil packet on a grill grate over low coals, checking at eight minutes.
https://savoriurbane.com/brownie-cookies-cu-ciocolata-si-alune-de-padure-reteta-de-biscuiti-negrese-cu-baileys