Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie
One pan, one big cookie, cut into wedges. Built for a dutch oven or a covered skillet over coals.
- calories
- 330
- weight
- 2.6 oz
- cal / oz
- 127
- protein
- 3 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 30 min
- total time
- 40 min
- water
- 45 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
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 2 1/4 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Light brown sugar | 3/4 cup | packed |
| Granulated sugar | 1/2 cup | |
| Baking soda | 1 tsp | |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Powdered whole egg | 3 tbsp | stands in for 1 egg plus 1 yolk |
| Semi-sweet chocolate chips | 1 1/2 cups | |
| Shelf-stable butter | 1 cup | ghee or canned butter; both keep without a cooler |
| Vanilla extract | 2 tsp | |
| Water | 3 tbsp | cold, for the egg powder |
Method
- Melt the butter in the dutch oven over low coals, then pour it into a bowl or a clean pot and let it cool for a few minutes. Off the heat, or the eggs scramble.
- Stir the water into the melted butter with the vanilla, then whisk in the egg powder until no dry specks are left.
- Add the premixed dry bag and stir until it comes together as a stiff dough. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Wipe the dutch oven, press the dough flat across the bottom, and put the lid on.
- Bake with about 8 coals underneath and 16 on the lid, roughly 325 F. Twenty-five to thirty minutes. Rotate the pot and the lid a quarter turn every ten minutes so it does not scorch on one side.
- Pull it when the edges are set and the middle still looks soft. Let it sit ten minutes in the pan, then cut wedges.
A skillet cookie is easier in camp than drop cookies for the obvious reason: you press it once and bake it once. No sheet pans, no batches, no scooping in the dark. It also survives uneven camp heat better, because a thick slab has enough mass to forgive a hot spot on one side of the pot.
The home-kitchen version leans on cold butter and fresh eggs. Neither travels, so this uses ghee or canned butter and powdered whole egg rehydrated in a little water. Melted fat makes a chewier, denser cookie than creamed butter does, which is fine here — that is the texture you want out of a dutch oven anyway. Coal count matters more than time: most of the heat goes on the lid so the top browns and the bottom does not burn.
Packing
Flour, both sugars, baking soda, salt, and egg powder go in one bag at home. Chips ride in a second bag so they do not melt into the flour on a hot drive. Ghee in a screw-top tin, vanilla in a small dropper bottle.
Variations
- Swap half the chips for butterscotch chips or chopped dried cherries.
- Add 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts if nobody in camp has a nut allergy.
- No dutch oven: use a covered skillet on a grill grate over low coals, check at fifteen minutes.
https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/chocolate-chip-skillet-cookie