Marzipan Cranberry Camp Cookies
Browned butter, grated marzipan, and white chocolate, baked in a Dutch oven over coals.
- calories
- 390
- weight
- 2.9 oz
- cal / oz
- 134
- protein
- 6 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 25 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 40 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
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Butter | 200 g | rides in the cooler |
|---|---|---|
| White sugar | 75 g | |
| Brown sugar | 175 g | |
| Eggs | 2 | |
| All-purpose flour | 300 g | premixed at home with the leaveners |
| Baking powder | 1 tsp | |
| Baking soda | 1/2 tsp | |
| Marzipan | 100 g | keep it cold or it smears instead of grating |
| Brazil nuts or macadamias | 50 g | |
| White chocolate | 100 g | |
| Dried cranberries | 30 g | |
| Flaky salt | 1 tsp |
Method
- Set 20-24 charcoal briquettes going, or burn a hardwood fire down to coals. You want steady heat, not flame.
- Melt the butter in the Dutch oven over the coals. It will foam, then quiet down and turn amber and smell like nuts. Pull it off before it goes past that. Scrape it into a bowl and wipe the oven out.
- Stir both sugars into the hot butter, then beat in the eggs one at a time.
- Add the premixed flour, baking powder, and soda. Stir until no dry streaks are left and stop there.
- Grate the marzipan on the coarse side of a box grater. Chop the nuts and white chocolate. Fold them in with the cranberries. Let the dough sit 15 minutes somewhere cool.
- Line the Dutch oven with parchment or foil. Shape golf-ball portions, about 80 g, and set four in at a time with room between them. Sprinkle flaky salt over each.
- Lid on. Put roughly two-thirds of the coals on the lid and one-third underneath. Bake 12-15 minutes, rotating the oven and lid a quarter turn each way at the halfway mark.
- Pull them when the edges are set and the middles still look underdone. They finish firming as they cool. Give them ten minutes before anyone touches them.
- Reload coals on the lid between batches or the later rounds bake pale.
This is a home baking recipe pushed onto coals, and the only hard part is heat control. A Dutch oven with most of the coals on the lid behaves like an oven with a top element: the tops brown, the bottoms do not scorch. Four cookies per round is the honest limit. Crowd it and they run together into one sheet.
The marzipan is the reason to bother. Grated cold, it stays in visible pockets instead of dissolving, so you get almond paste against tart cranberry rather than one flat sweet note. Browning the butter first costs five minutes and is what keeps 250 g of sugar from tasting like nothing but sugar. Butter, eggs, and marzipan all need the cooler, which is why this is a car-camping dessert and not a backpacking one.
Packing
Weigh the flour, baking powder, and baking soda into one bag at home so camp mixing is two bowls, not five measures. Nuts, chocolate, and cranberries go in a second bag. Marzipan and butter live in the cooler, both wrapped tight.
Variations
- Bake at home instead and carry the cookies. Same dough, 200 C for 12 minutes.
- Portion the raw dough into balls, freeze them, and bake straight from the cooler with five extra minutes.
- Skip the nuts and use an extra 50 g of white chocolate if someone in camp cannot have them.
https://www.matprat.no/oppskrifter/kos/cookies-med-marsipan