Gingerbread Cookies in a Camp Pan
Spiced brown-butter dough mixed at home, baked over a low flame in a covered pan.
- calories
- 500
- weight
- 3.7 oz
- cal / oz
- 135
- protein
- 7 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 25 min
- cook
- 14 min
- total time
- 39 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
- Snack
- Campfire coals
- Canister stove
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Canoe / raft
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Butter | 200 g | browned at home |
|---|---|---|
| White sugar | 75 g | |
| Brown sugar | 175 g | |
| Powdered whole egg | equivalent of 2 eggs | about 4 tbsp powder plus 4 tbsp water; real eggs if you are cooking the same day |
| Wheat flour | 300 g | |
| Baking powder | 1 tsp | |
| Baking soda | 1/2 tsp | |
| Ground clove | 1/4 tsp | |
| Ground ginger | 1/4 tsp | |
| Ground cinnamon | 1/4 tsp | |
| Ground black pepper | 1/4 tsp | |
| Almonds | 60 g | roughly chopped and toasted |
| Flake salt | 1 tsp |
Method
- At home: melt the butter in a pan over medium-high heat and keep stirring until the milk solids go light brown. Watch it. It goes from brown to burnt in under a minute.
- Toast the chopped almonds dry in a pan until they smell like almonds, then set them aside.
- Put both sugars in a bowl and pour the hot butter over them. Stir.
- Rehydrate the egg powder with water, then beat it into the sugar and butter a little at a time.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, clove, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, and salt together, then work the dry into the wet until no dry flour is left. Fold in the almonds.
- Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and pack them in a hard container with parchment between the layers.
- In camp: set the pan over a low flame or the edge of the coals, lid on, for about five minutes to warm it through.
- Lay a round of parchment in the pan and set five or six dough balls on it with room between them. They spread.
- Cover and bake 10 to 14 minutes over the lowest heat you can hold. Rotate the pan every few minutes so one side does not scorch.
- Pull them off the heat and let them cool in the pan. They firm up as they cool. Eaten hot they fall apart.
Cookies over a fire fail in one predictable way: the bottom burns before the middle sets. Everything here is aimed at that. Low heat, a lid to trap air heat above the dough, parchment between dough and metal, and a pan you rotate instead of trusting. The dough is stiff and low-moisture, so it tolerates a long slow bake without drying out.
Browning the butter at home is not a flourish, it is the reason the dough tastes like anything after a day in a pack. Powdered egg replaces fresh so the container can ride at ambient temperature; use real eggs only if you are baking within a few hours of leaving the house. The pepper is the point of the spice mix, not a typo. It gives the sweetness something to push against.
Packing
Dough balls go in a rigid container, not a bag, or you arrive with one large ball. Cut parchment rounds to fit your pan at home and pack them flat inside the container lid.
Variations
- Swap the almonds for chopped dark chocolate if you are cooking somewhere cold enough that it will not melt in your pack.
- No pan lid: use foil, crimped loosely, and expect a couple more minutes.
- Press a dough ball flat and cook it like a pancake, flipping often, if all you have is a stove and a frying pan.
https://www.friluftsmat.no/post/pepperkake-cookies-p%C3%A5-hajka