Dutch Oven Vanilla Cake
A one-pot vanilla cake mixed from powders and baked over coals in a dutch oven.
- calories
- 330
- weight
- 3.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 103
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 7, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 30 min
- total time
- 40 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.
- Dessert
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 3/4 cup | |
|---|---|---|
| Baking powder | 1 tsp | |
| Baking soda | 1/4 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Sugar | 1/4 cup | |
| Powdered buttermilk | 3 tbsp | stands in for the 3/4 cup of fresh buttermilk |
| Powdered whole egg | 1 tbsp | equals one egg |
| Neutral oil | 1/4 cup | replaces the creamed butter |
| Vanilla extract | 2 tsp | 1 tsp for the batter, 1 tsp for the glaze |
| Powdered sugar | 1 cup | |
| Powdered milk | 2 tbsp | for the glaze |
| Water | about 3/4 cup total |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down. You want coals, not flame.
- Stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, buttermilk powder, and egg powder together in the pot or in the bag you carried them in.
- Add the oil, 1 tsp of vanilla, and about 150 ml of water. Stir until it is a thick batter with no dry pockets. Do not beat it past that.
- Oil the dutch oven well, including the sides, and pour the batter in no deeper than an inch and a half.
- Lid on. Set the oven on a thin bed of coals and shovel about twice as many coals onto the lid. Rotate the oven a quarter turn every ten minutes and rotate the lid the other way.
- Check at 25 minutes. A twig pushed into the center should come out clean. Pull it off the coals when it does.
- For the glaze, stir the powdered sugar, powdered milk, remaining vanilla, and water a teaspoon at a time until it pours. Spoon it over the cake while the cake is still warm.
The original is a buttermilk cake baked in a wreath pan in a kitchen oven. Almost none of that survives a trip, so the perishables were swapped out: powdered buttermilk and powdered egg for the fresh ones, oil for the creamed butter, powdered milk for the glaze. Oil does the job here because there is no butter to cream anyway, and it keeps the crumb moist for a second day.
Heat placement is the whole recipe. Most of the coals go on the lid, because a cake wants to bake from above; too many underneath and the bottom is carbon while the middle is raw. Rotating the oven and the lid in opposite directions evens out the hot spots your fire will inevitably have. The glaze is not decoration. It soaks into a camp cake that has spent thirty minutes losing water to a fire.
Packing
Everything dry except the glaze goes into one bag at home: flour, leavening, salt, sugar, buttermilk powder, egg powder. Powdered sugar and milk powder ride in a second bag. Oil and vanilla go in small dropper bottles, doubled in a ziplock, because vanilla leaking into a food bag ruins the food bag.
Variations
- Stir dried blueberries or chopped dried apple into the batter at the last moment.
- Skip the glaze and dust the top with cinnamon sugar. Less to carry, less to spill.
- A few tablespoons of cocoa powder swapped in for an equal amount of flour turns it chocolate.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/vanilla-wreath-cake