If you looked carefully at the picture where I posted our camping supplies, you probably thought to yourself, "Is that a bundt cake pan?" The answer to that question, is "Yes, that is a bundt cake pan." The followup question is, "Why would someone who doesn't even bring a sleeping bag to keep himself warm, bring a bundt cake pan?" I will explain.
In all of our camping trips, they have all just been short overnight stays, and I have never actually cooked anything (beyond smores) because we always eat bbq at Hillsdale Bank the night before and then we usually just split a Clif Bar or two in the morning and then follow it up with something more substantial later. But this camping trip I wanted to try to actually cook something. And no, that something was not a bundt cake.
A while back I read about something called the Kelly Kettle. If you're really into camping gear you can look that up on the Internet. For those of you who just want the short version, it's a bottle with a chimney built right through the middle of it. You light a fire at the bottom and the heat goes up the chimney and quickly brings your water to a boil. I was intrigued by the idea because you don't have to carry cooking fuel with you, you can just use twigs. So for almost a year now I have been pondering what else I could use that would work the same way. Let me tell you, there are not a lot of things that are built that hold water and have a tube running through the middle of them. Then a couple of months ago it hit me that one of those funny looking cake pans might work.
As with any idea I have, I always assume that somebody else on the Internet has already had the idea. Sure enough, I did some searching and it turns out that people have been campsite cooking in bundt cake pans for a while now. Not a lot of people, but some people have done it, and they report that it works well. You turn it upside down, the heat goes up the middle, and it cooks nicely. So I wanted to try it.
Of course I didn't want to try it at home first. No, I wanted to field test it.
I brought some dehydrated, steamed, shredded (not in that order) sweet potatoes. I added some oil and brown sugar, and I threw in some regular potato flakes. This would be our breakfast. Provided I could cook it.
I filled the bundt cake pan with water, put it on the grill outside the shelter, stuffed some dry paper towels and napkins in the hole in the middle and lit them on fire.
So did it work?
Haha, yes it did.
Look at the size of that flame shooting out! Isn't it great!
I love it when you have an idea and it actually works. Now, granted I didn't have any dry twigs thanks to the rainstorm, so the fire didn't last very long, but it still got the pan pretty hot. Especially the center part of the pan.
I added the potatoes and every time I pushed them against the center of the pan I could actually hear them sizzle.
How did it taste?
Well, not amazing actually. The boys said it was "yummy" but I thought it (A) wasn't quite warm enough, and (B) tasted a bit off due to the fact that I think the store-bought potato flakes came pre-seasoned with garlic. That was not one of the flavors I was going for.
Either way, I count the whole thing as a success.
I was carefully rationing my last little bit of cell phone battery to load a weather radar and confirm that the rain was really going to pass us by. Sure enough, it finally did. We were all a little cold and fairly wet from the rain that was blown into the shelter, but we were also rarin' to go.
The reason we were all rarin' to go, was because the night before when we left Hillsdale I had spotted a sign that said "Pancake Breakfast - Saturday Morning 6 - 10". Now, there is no food my boys love more than pancakes, so cold or not, we were loading up and moving out.
So we did. And it was great.
I can't tell you how many times the boys and I have been out adventuring and we've just randomly stumbled upon something like this that makes our day.
We rode into Hillsdale where the small crowd in front of the community center admired our bike setup. Then we went inside and paid $12 for all of us to have all-you-can-eat pancakes. Seth told me later, "Daddy, that's the best pancake place ever, because you can just keep going back and going back."
And if that wasn't awesome enough, we were told we just had to go to the playground across the street for the Easter egg hunt.
And if that wasn't enough we were told we couldn't possibly leave without taking at least two bags of candy home with us.
The boys had a blast, and then we splashed all the way home in the mud.
The end.
