Dutch Oven Sour Cream Coffee Cake
Cinnamon pecan streusel cake baked over coals, built from a dry premix and a bottle of oil.
- calories
- 430
- weight
- 3.4 oz
- cal / oz
- 126
- protein
- 6 g
- serves
- 9, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 45 min
- total time
- 60 min
- water
- 180 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.
- Breakfast
- Dessert
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All purpose flour | 1 1/2 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Granulated sugar | 3/4 cup | |
| Powdered sour cream | 1/3 cup | sold as cultured sour cream powder, no cooler needed |
| Powdered whole milk | 2 tbsp | |
| Powdered egg | 2 tbsp | equal to one egg |
| Baking powder | 1 tsp | |
| Baking soda | 1/2 tsp | |
| Kosher salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Vanilla powder | 1/2 tsp | extract works, but the bottle leaks |
| Neutral oil | 1/2 cup | stands in for the butter |
| Light brown sugar | 1/2 cup | streusel |
| Ground cinnamon | 1 1/2 tsp | streusel |
| Chopped pecans | 3/4 cup | streusel |
| Water | 3/4 cup |
Method
- Build a fire early and let it burn down. You want coals, not flame, and you want them about 40 minutes before you plan to eat.
- Mix the brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans in a cup. That is the streusel, and it needs no fat.
- Dump the flour premix into the pot lid or a bowl. Pour in the oil and 3/4 cup of water and stir until the dry streaks are gone. Stop there. More stirring makes it tough.
- Oil a 10-inch dutch oven. Spread in half the batter, scatter half the streusel, add the rest of the batter, then the rest of the streusel.
- Set the oven on 8 coals and put 16 on the lid. That runs around 350F. Bake 35 to 45 minutes.
- Rotate the oven a third turn and the lid the other way every 10 minutes so it does not scorch on one side.
- It is done when a twig or knife comes out of the center clean. Pull the lid coals off and let it sit 10 minutes before cutting.
Coffee cake is a butter-and-sour-cream recipe, which is exactly what a camp kitchen does not have. Oil replaces the butter one for one by volume and behaves better in the cold. Powdered sour cream and milk powder go into the dry premix and rehydrate with the water, which keeps the acid that the baking soda needs to lift the crumb.
The streusel is layered through the middle as well as on top for a reason: it gives the cake two seams of sugar and fat that stay damp while the edges set against the hot cast iron. Coal count matters more than time here. Too many under the pot and you get a burnt bottom with raw center, which is the standard dutch oven failure.
Packing
Everything dry except the streusel goes in one zip bag at home. Streusel in a second bag. Oil in a leakproof bottle inside another bag. Three items, no measuring in camp.
Variations
- Swap the pecans for chopped dried apple and skip the nuts entirely.
- A parchment round in the bottom of the oven makes cleanup a wipe instead of a scrub.
- No dutch oven: bake it in a foil pan inside a covered skillet set on a ring of coals, checking earlier.
https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/sour-cream-coffee-cake