Dutch Oven Cherry Peach Cobbler
Two cans of pie filling, a boxed crust, and a lid full of coals.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 9 oz
- cal / oz
- 58
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 40 min
- total time
- 55 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
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Peach pie filling | 2 cans (21 oz each) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cherry pie filling | 2 cans (21 oz each) | |
| Refrigerated pie crust | 2 boxes | two rounds per box; keep them cold until you use them |
| Butter | 4 tbsp | 3 tbsp in the filling, the rest for the top |
| Sugar | 1/4 cup plus a spoonful for the lid |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down to coals. You want about 8 under a 12-inch oven and 16 on the lid.
- Unroll two crust rounds and press them across the bottom and a little way up the sides of the oven.
- Dump both cans of each filling into a bowl and stir in the sugar. Taste it; canned filling is already sweet, so use less if it needs less.
- Cut a third round into rough squares and fold them into the fruit with 3 tbsp of butter. They cook into dumplings.
- Pour the filling into the oven and lay the last round over the top. Cut a few vents, dot with the remaining butter, and dust with sugar.
- Set the oven on the coals, load the lid, and bake about 40 minutes. Rotate the oven a third turn every ten minutes and the lid the other way so it does not scorch on one side.
- Pull it when the top is brown and the fruit bubbles through the vents. Let it sit ten minutes or it will run everywhere.
Canned pie filling is doing the hard work here. It is already thickened, already sweet, and needs no fridge, so the only real cooking problem is heat management. Cherry and peach together keep it from going flat: the cherries bring acid the peaches do not have.
The cut-up crust folded into the fruit is what makes this different from fruit with a lid on it. Those squares soak and swell into dumplings, so the middle has structure instead of being a pool. Coal count and rotation matter more than time — a Dutch oven left still on one hot spot burns the bottom crust long before the top browns.
Packing
Cans and sugar travel anywhere. The crust is the fragile part: it stays in the cooler flat, not wedged under a water jug, or it cracks when you unroll it.
Variations
- Swap the top crust for biscuit dough dropped in spoonfuls if you would rather not deal with rolls.
- Two cans of one fruit works fine. Cherry alone is sharper, peach alone is sweeter.
- No cooler? Use shelf-stable biscuit mix and water instead of the crust and it becomes a backpackable dessert.
https://camprecipes.com/classic-recipes/cherry-peach-cobbler