Sweet Potato Spice Cake in a Dutch Oven
A spiced sweet potato cake baked in coals, with an orange-scented glaze stirred up in a mug.
- calories
- 430
- weight
- 4.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 96
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 10, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 40 min
- total time
- 60 min
- water
- 180 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
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Sweet potato flakes or dehydrated sweet potato powder | 1 cup | stands in for 12 oz of fresh sweet potato |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 3 cups | all-purpose is fine; cake flour is lighter but fragile in a pack |
| Baking powder | 3 tsp | |
| Ground cinnamon | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Ground nutmeg | 3/4 tsp | |
| Ground cloves | 1/4 tsp | |
| Sugar | 2 1/4 cups | |
| Powdered whole egg | 5 eggs worth | about 3/4 cup powder |
| Powdered milk | 1/3 cup | reconstitutes to the 1 1/4 cups of milk |
| Shelf-stable butter or vegetable shortening | 10 tbsp | ghee or a canned shortening both hold at ambient temperature |
| Vanilla extract | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Powdered sugar | 1 1/2 cups | for the glaze |
| Orange drink powder or powdered orange juice | 2 tbsp | replaces frozen concentrate |
| Orange extract | 1/4 tsp | |
| Cocoa powder | 2 tbsp | optional, for a dark glaze instead of orange |
Method
- Burn a fire down to coals well before you want cake. You need about 25 briquette-equivalents of steady heat, not flame.
- Grease a 12-inch dutch oven, or line it with parchment if you brought some.
- In the oven off heat, cut the butter into the dry mix with a spoon until it looks like coarse sand. Add 180 ml of cold water and the vanilla. Stir until it just comes together, no longer.
- Level the batter. Lid on. Set the oven on a ring of about 8 coals and put 16 or 17 on the lid. Most of the heat goes on top.
- Bake 35 to 45 minutes. Rotate the oven a third turn every 10 minutes and rotate the lid the other way, or one side will scorch.
- It is done when a twig comes out clean. Pull it off the coals and take the lid off so the residual heat stops working.
- Stir the powdered sugar, orange powder, orange extract, and a splash of water in a mug until it pours. Spoon it over the cake once the cake is warm rather than hot.
The original is a layer cake with cream cheese frosting, which is two things a campsite cannot give you: an oven that holds temperature and a fridge. The fix is to bake it flat in a dutch oven and replace the frosting with a powdered-sugar glaze mixed in a mug. Sweet potato flakes do the same job as roasted sweet potato at a fraction of the weight, and they rehydrate in the batter water without a separate step.
Coal placement is the whole recipe. Roughly two-thirds of the heat belongs on the lid, because coals underneath will burn the bottom long before the middle sets. Rotating the oven and lid in opposite directions evens out the hot spot every fire has. The cake tastes like a spice cake, not like sweet potato; the potato is there for moisture, which matters more when you are baking over an uneven heat source.
Packing
Combine sweet potato flakes, flour, baking powder, spices, sugar, egg powder, milk powder, and salt in one gallon bag at home; that bag is the whole cake. Fat rides in a screw-top jar. Glaze powders go in a snack bag with the extract in a dropper bottle.
Variations
- Swap the orange powder for the cocoa and you get a chocolate glaze instead.
- Split the glaze powder in two and do half orange, half cocoa, for stripes.
- A handful of chopped dried apricots in the batter adds chew and hides an underbaked spot.
https://www.tasteandtellblog.com/the-cake-slice-bakers-sweet-potato-cake