Pumpkin Spice Cake Bites
Spice cake mix, pumpkin, and butter baked into balls in a Dutch oven, then rolled in cinnamon sugar.
- calories
- 420
- weight
- 4.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 93
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 30 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
- Breakfast
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Spice cake mix | 1 box (about 15 oz) | just the dry mix, ignore the box directions |
|---|---|---|
| Canned pumpkin puree | 1 can (15 oz) | not pie filling |
| Butter | 1/2 cup | melted; keeps unrefrigerated for a weekend in cool weather |
| Cinnamon sugar | 1/2 cup | or 1/2 cup sugar with 2 tsp cinnamon shaken together |
Method
- Build a bed of coals and get the Dutch oven warming. You want roughly 350F: eight coals under, sixteen on the lid for a 12-inch oven.
- Stir the cake mix and the whole can of pumpkin together in a bowl or the oven itself. No eggs, no oil, no water. The batter should be thick enough to scoop.
- Grease the oven bottom or line it with parchment. Drop rounded tablespoons of batter, spaced apart, straight onto it.
- Cover and bake 18 to 22 minutes. They are done when the tops spring back and nothing wet comes off on a knife.
- Lift them out, brush or dunk in melted butter, then roll in the cinnamon sugar while still hot. Bake the rest in batches.
Two ingredients do the whole job. Canned pumpkin has enough moisture and body to stand in for the eggs, oil, and water the box asks for, so the only wet thing you carry is a can that keeps forever. That also means no fridge and no cracked eggs in a cooler.
The cinnamon sugar has to go on hot. Once the outside cools it stops taking the coating, and you get plain cake balls instead. Butter first, sugar second, one batch at a time.
Dutch oven heat is the part that goes wrong. Too many coals under the oven and the bottoms burn before the middles set, so keep most of the heat on the lid and rotate the oven a quarter turn every five minutes.
Packing
Cake mix in a zip bag with the box directions thrown away. Cinnamon sugar premixed in a small jar. The pumpkin can and the butter are the heavy items, so this is a car or basecamp recipe, not a carry.
Variations
- No Dutch oven: press the batter into a greased foil pan and bake on a grill grate over low coals, checking early.
- Swap chocolate cake mix for pumpkin brownie bites.
- A handful of chocolate chips in the batter melts into the centers.
https://homeandkind.com/blogs/food-recipes/easy-baked-pumpkin-donut-holes-with-walmart