With July 4th coming up this weekend, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to talk to you about peach cobbler or campfire Dutch oven cooking, so since I like to cook peach cobbler outside in my cast iron Dutch oven, we’ll just talk about both.
One of my favorite parts of camping is cooking on the campfire. The food just tastes better somehow, and if you wait until after dark to eat, you won’t be able to see any bugs that might have fallen into your food as it was cooking. Those two things may be related.
We’ve cooked all sorts of things on the campfire—turtles/hobo/foil packs, hotdogs, scrambled eggs and bacon, campfire cones, and of course marshmallows. We’ve even tried cooking biscuits on a hotdog stick, which I don’t recommend because the way you tell the biscuit is done is it slides off the stick and into the fire. High effort/low reward.
The pinnacle of campfire cooking happens in the Dutch oven. You can make a stew and hang it over the fire to cook all day. You can bake fresh biscuits in the morning. You can even make homemade donuts in one. (This is a good—and delicious—way to season a new cast iron Dutch oven.) But the Dutch oven is most revered for the quality of cobbler it turns out. It’s one of the first things Boy Scouts and, in my troop, Girl Scouts learn to make.
The recipe is simple. All you need are 2 (30-ounce) cans of sliced peaches, a box of white or yellow cake mix, a half stick of butter (or more!), and some cinnamon. It works best in a 12-inch camp Dutch oven. I have this one.
The first thing you do is light charcoal briquettes in a charcoal chimney and let them get good and hot.
Pour the peaches with the syrup into the Dutch oven and sprinkle the cake mix on top. I like to lightly stir up a little of the syrup into the cake mix to make sure there aren’t dry spots in the finished product, but it will be fine if you don’t. Place dots of butter on top and sprinkle with cinnamon to taste.
Place the Dutch oven over 15 hot briquettes, put the lid on it, and arrange 10 hot briquettes in a checkerboard pattern on top. This will bake the cobbler at about 350 degrees inside the oven. Bake it for about 45 minutes. Every 10-15 minutes rotate the lid a quarter turn to help the cobbler cook evenly. You can also make this cobbler in your kitchen by putting it in a large casserole dish and baking at 350 degrees in your oven.
If you’d rather cook inside, my favorite inside peach cobbler recipe is from Paula Deen, of course. This one calls for fresh peaches, which we have in abundance right now. I’ve also used canned peaches, and it was delicious as well. You can find an easily printable copy of the recipe online here.
Early American settlers enjoyed fruit cobblers and would have cooked them over a fire much like the cobblers we make while camping. In those days, the yummy goodness would have consisted of fresh fruit when available and dried or canned fruit out of season with a biscuit-like topping baked on top. Before the late 1800s, fruit cobbler was considered a breakfast food and not a dessert. We should bring that tradition back. (Actually, I do when I have some in the fridge, but don’t tell anyone.)
Many people like to serve their cobbler with ice cream on top, but those people are wrong. I’m strict about my pie and ice cream not touching, so I always serve it on the side in it’s own dish, but you do you. (Ice cream should not touch cake either and should always be served in it’s own container on the side.)
Whatever patriotic dessert you choose to make this weekend—I’ll be making an apple pie—I hope you have a very happy July 4th holiday. America rocks, y’all!
Interesting Stuff From the Interwebs
Every headline writer everywhere needs to hang up their keyboards because there will never be a headline as awesome as this headline in the New York Times. (The photo captions in the article are kind of awesome too.
“When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray”
Hungry, hungry, Husky. We *may* need to get Jackson one of these.
The summer is halfway over! How is it July already? I hope you are having a great time relaxing and moving at a slower pace. So far the Jacobs have not been relaxing or moving at a slower pace, but that is all about to change. July is going to be all about vacation, baby!
Until next time,
Karla