Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler
Dried peaches, a scratch topping, and a lidful of coals. Camp dessert that keeps in a pack all week.
- calories
- 420
- weight
- 4 oz
- cal / oz
- 105
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 50 min
- total time
- 65 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- 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
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dried peaches | 3 cups | chopped into bite-size pieces at home |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 1 cup | split: 1/3 for the fruit, 2/3 for the topping |
| Citric acid or powdered lemon | 1 tsp | stands in for the lemon juice |
| All purpose flour | 1 1/2 cups | gluten-free blend works |
| Baking powder | 2 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Cinnamon | 1 tsp | |
| Butter or ghee | 6 tbsp | cold if you have a cooler, ghee if you do not |
| Water | 600 ml |
Method
- Put the dried peaches, the citric acid, and 1/3 cup of the sugar in the Dutch oven with 600 ml of water. Set it over the fire and bring it to a simmer.
- Simmer 10 minutes, lid off, until the fruit has plumped and the liquid has gone syrupy. Pull it off the heat.
- Dump the dry mix over the fruit in an even layer. Do not stir it in. The unstirred flour is what makes the topping.
- Cut the butter into small pieces and scatter them across the top. Cover.
- Set the oven on a bed of about 8 coals and put 16 or so on the lid. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, turning the oven and the lid a quarter turn every 10 minutes so nothing scorches.
- Done when the topping is set and dry to a poke. Let it sit 10 minutes before you dig in.
The original is a slow cooker recipe built on fresh peaches and cold butter. Neither survives a trip, so this version starts from dried peaches and rebuilds their juice with water and sugar over the fire. Ten minutes of simmering does what maceration does at home: it pulls sugar into the fruit and leaves syrup behind for the topping to sit on.
The dry mix goes on unstirred on purpose. Flour that stays dry on top bakes into a crust while the underside soaks up syrup, which is the whole texture of a cobbler. Butter on top melts down through it. Ghee is the shelf-stable swap and works the same, just without the milk solids browning.
Packing
Flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and the topping sugar go in one bag at home. Peaches, fruit sugar, and citric acid go in a second. Butter rides in the cooler or you carry ghee instead.
Variations
- Swap in dried apples or a mixed dried-fruit bag. Cut the soak water to 500 ml for apples.
- Nutmeg or ginger in the dry mix if you want the spice past cinnamon.
- No Dutch oven: simmer the fruit in a pot, drop the dry mix in as dumplings, and cover on low for 20 minutes.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/slow-cooker-peach-cobbler