camp meals

Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler

Three ingredients, forty minutes on coals, and it disappears in six.

calories
420
weight
7 oz
cal / oz
60
protein
5 g
serves
8, scales
prep
5 min
cook
40 min
total time
45 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
  • Shelf stable
  • Actual cooking

Ingredients

Canned sliced peaches in syrup 2 large cans do not drain them
Yellow cake mix 1 box
Butter 1 stick cut into thin pats
Cinnamon 1 tsp

Method

  1. Line the dutch oven with parchment or grease it well. This is the step people skip and regret.
  2. Pour in the peaches with all their syrup and spread them flat.
  3. Sprinkle the dry cake mix evenly over the top. Do not stir. Stirring makes glue.
  4. Cover the surface with pats of butter and dust with cinnamon.
  5. Lid on, 8 coals underneath and 16 on the lid, for 40 minutes.
  6. It is done when the top is golden and the edges are bubbling.

The coal ratio is the only technical part of dutch oven baking: more coals on the lid than underneath, because you are baking, not simmering. Get that backwards and the bottom burns while the top stays raw.

Rotate the oven a third turn every ten minutes, and the lid a third turn the other way, and you will not get a hot spot.

Packing

Bring parchment rounds cut to size at home. Cleaning baked-on cobbler out of cast iron at a spigot is a genuinely bad evening.

Variations

  • Blackberries and a spice cake mix in late summer.
  • A can of soda in place of half the butter works and is somehow fine.