Dutch Oven Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake
A bakery bundt cake rebuilt out of boxes and powders, baked in coals at a campsite.
- calories
- 430
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 123
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 40 min
- total time
- 50 min
- water
- 360 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
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Devil's food cake mix | 1 box (about 15 oz) | |
|---|---|---|
| Instant chocolate pudding mix | 1 box (3.9 oz) | instant, not cook-and-serve |
| Powdered whole milk | 1/3 cup | stands in for the sour cream and milk |
| Powdered eggs | 3 tbsp | equals 3 eggs |
| Vegetable oil | 1/2 cup | |
| Chocolate chips | 1 cup | |
| Water | 1 1/2 cups | |
| Powdered sugar | 1 cup | for the glaze |
| Vanilla extract | 1 tsp | a small bottle, or skip it |
| Shortening and flour | 1 tbsp each | for greasing the oven |
Method
- Build a bed of coals. You want about 17 on the lid and 8 underneath for a 12-inch dutch oven, roughly 350F.
- Grease the inside of the dutch oven with shortening, then dust it with flour and tip out what does not stick. Cake sticks to bare cast iron and stays there.
- Dump the cake mix, pudding mix, milk powder, and egg powder into the oven or a bowl. Stir the dry stuff together first so the egg powder does not clump.
- Add the oil and 1 1/2 cups of water. Stir about fifty strokes, until no dry pockets are left. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Lid on, coals on top and under. Bake 35 to 45 minutes. Rotate the oven a third turn every ten minutes and the lid the opposite way, or one side burns.
- It is done when a twig or knife comes out of the center clean. Pull the bottom coals and let it sit ten minutes with the lid off.
- Stir the powdered sugar with the vanilla and a tablespoon of water at a time until it pours. Drizzle it over the warm cake.
The original is a copycat of a bakery bundt cake and leans on sour cream, fresh eggs, and a cream cheese frosting. None of that survives a cooler for long, so the wet ingredients here are all powder: whole milk powder does the tenderizing the sour cream did, and powdered egg binds the same way three eggs would. The instant pudding mix stays, because it is the reason a boxed cake comes out dense and damp instead of dry and crumbed.
The frosting is the real change. Cream cheese and butter beaten together is a refrigerator product, so it becomes a thin powdered sugar glaze mixed at camp with a spoonful of water. Heat control matters more than the batter does. Coals on the lid do most of the baking, and if you do not rotate the oven you get a scorched arc on whichever side faces the fire.
Packing
Combine cake mix, pudding mix, milk powder, and egg powder in one gallon freezer bag at home. Chocolate chips in a second bag, powdered sugar in a third. Oil goes in a leakproof bottle, inside another bag.
Variations
- Swap half the chips for chopped dried cherries.
- A tablespoon of instant coffee in the dry mix pushes the chocolate darker.
- No dutch oven: bake it in a foil pan set on a wire rack inside a covered kettle grill, indirect heat.
https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/chocolate-chocolate-chip-nothing-bundt-cake-copycat-recipe-and-tutorial