Skillet Apple Dapple Cake
A pan cake built on dried apples, oil, and one skillet over coals.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 4.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 138
- protein
- 7 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 35 min
- total time
- 45 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- 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
- Campfire coals
- Dutch oven
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 3 cups (360 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| White sugar | 1 1/4 cups | |
| Baking soda | 1 tsp | |
| Cinnamon | 1/2 tsp | |
| Nutmeg | 1/4 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Powdered whole egg | 6 tbsp | stands in for 3 eggs |
| Vegetable oil | 1 1/4 cups | light olive oil works |
| Vanilla extract | 2 tsp | or 1/2 tsp vanilla powder in the dry mix |
| Dried apple slices | 3 cups | tart varieties hold shape better than sweet |
| Walnuts or pecans | 1 1/3 cups | toast them at home |
| Light brown sugar | 1 cup | for the sauce |
| Butter or ghee | 6 tbsp | ghee keeps without a cooler |
| Powdered milk | 3 tbsp | mixed with 1/4 cup water |
| Orange zest, dried | 1 tsp | optional |
Method
- Cover the dried apples with about 200 ml of hot water and leave them 15 minutes. Drain off anything they did not take up and chop them coarse.
- Whisk the egg powder into 150 ml of water until there are no lumps. Add the oil, vanilla, and white sugar and stir.
- Stir the dry mix in until it just comes together. Overworking it makes a tough cake.
- Fold in the apples and nuts. Pour into a greased dutch oven or a deep skillet with a lid.
- Bake with coals under and on top, roughly a third below and two thirds above, 30 to 40 minutes. Rotate the pot a quarter turn every ten minutes. It is done when a twig comes out clean.
- For the sauce, melt the butter with the brown sugar in a small pot, add the milk powder slaked in 1/4 cup water and the zest, and boil two minutes. Pour it over the cake in the pot.
This started as a home oven cake with fresh Granny Smiths. Fresh apples are mostly water and mostly weight, so they became dried apples rehydrated in the pot. That trade is close to even: the apples give back their water, and the batter is wet enough from the oil that nothing goes chalky. Powdered egg replaces the three eggs, and ghee replaces butter in the sauce if there is no cooler.
The oil is the reason this travels. An oil-based batter does not need creaming, does not care about temperature, and stays soft for two days in a pot, which a butter cake will not. Coal placement matters more than time here: too much heat underneath burns the bottom before the middle sets, so keep most of the coals on the lid.
Packing
Flour, sugar, soda, spices, salt, and egg powder go in one bag. Apples and nuts in another. Oil in a leakproof bottle. Brown sugar and milk powder in a third bag for the sauce.
Variations
- Skip the caramel entirely and the cake still works. It just goes drier.
- Swap the nuts for shredded coconut or pumpkin seeds if someone in camp cannot have them.
- Half the batter in a foil packet on a grill grate cooks in about 20 minutes.
https://www.maritimeglutton.com/apple-dapple-cake-recipe