Scout Project: Campfire Cakes (Cakes Cooked in an Orange)

Intro: Scout Project: Campfire Cakes (Cakes Cooked in an Orange)

Whilst looking for a new fun campfire activity i came across people talking about cooking cakes inside oranges, but unfortunatly none of them were ever able to provide me with a method to getting them right. So, in preparation for scout camp next weekend, i decided to do some investigating...

They are REALLY easy to make, and taste great

If you like it rate it, if you make it show me :D

STEP 1: Ingredients

Wotcha' gunna need:
Mixing bowl
Spoons/forks
Sharp Knife
Tinfoil
Campfire, Fire pit or BBQ

Self Raising flour
Castor Sugar
Marge or Butter
Eggs

If you want to have orange juice at the camp:
Jug
Bowl
Seive
Spoon
Cups


I usually make a 4442 sponge cake mix...

4oz of Caster Sugar
4oz of Marge or Butter
4oz of Self Raising Flour
2 eggs

but to try it out, i decided to make it a 2 2 2 1 mix

I found that this amount would fill two to three normal /medium sized oranges, so you will have to work out  how much mix you will need for your troop size.

STEP 2: BIOHAZZARD AREA

This REALLY annoys me, when someone makes something for you to CONSUME and they don't bother to wash their hands before hand... So I have decided to make a point of a few things that TV Chefs or whatnot don't seem to be able to do

# Remove any rings/ Jewellery that may come in contact with the food
# Wash your hands before you cook
# After handling Eggs, its good practice to wash your hands (Stops the spread of Salmonella and such)
# DO NOT Lick or taste off a spoon THEN put it back into the bowl you took the sample from... EWW... If I wanted your germs I would kiss you!

Before I start sounding like a rambling germ freak, I'm sure you'll agree this is all common sense... But some people just don't ...get... that its not hygienic

At camp it's not always easy to maintain the same levels of hygiene as in the home, but it's best to make sure your Scouts remember:

• Make sure they remember to wash their hands, or at least use abit of antibacterial gel before they eat
• Remind them to take off their neckerchiefs whilst around the fire
• Remind them that fire=hot... some of them forget.

STEP 3: Dry Ingredients

Measure out your dry ingredients and put to one side

STEP 4: Mix Em Up

Right, now making cakes is easy, don't let people tell you it's difficult... I did it by hand because at camp it's not likely that you'll have a mixer :)

• Mix your butter and castor sugar together
• Crack in your eggs
• Mix it all together as if you where whisking scrambled eggs... make sure you get loads of air into the mix
• Chuck in your flour, i didn't bother sieving it or adding it bit by bit... do whatever makes you feel happy
• When it resembles a smooth paste it's ready
• Add in choc chips or any other flavorings you want (i didn't)

STEP 5: Oh Orange You're So Hollow

Now, however you wish to do it, you need to hollow out your orange ... I cut the top inch off as a lid, then carefully scooped out all the orange out of the orange and the lid, making sure to get out all the orange skin, leaving just the tick white pith attached to the skin (please say you understand what i mean)

At camp I am going to get my scouts to put the remaining orange juice and pulp in to a bowl, which we will sieve and drink as orange juice. (AHA They'll never guess they're eating fruit!!!)

STEP 6: Stuffit!!!

I filled my orange to about a centimeter under the rim.... it doesn't really matter how much you put in, but it will over flow whilst cooking if you put too much in

STEP 7: Put Y'coat On!!

Pop the lid back on your orange and wrap up your orange ready to go on the fire... I wrapped it so that all the edges were at the top, forming a funnel/handle to pick it up with

All you need do now is plop it in the fire, put it in a nice warm spot, not with flames but on embers. Because this was very much an experiment i decied to time how long it took

After about 5-10minutes i could smell orange oil so i knew it was cooking, and there was some steam... at 10mins i decided to have a look

STEP 8: Smells Ready...

After 10 minutes  i gave it a look, and it looked delicious, i decided to take it off the embers...

STEP 9: Tuck In

I 100% guarantee that EVERYONE will love these, well except for those people who don't like orange... or cake ....

The cakes are light and fluffy with a very slight taste of orange. Just a nice little change of pace from your usual camp side twists, or smores

Good luck and let me know how they go

Comments

[jessyratfink]

This is wonderful! I've been wanting to try this for forever. :D

[Biggsy]

well if it works, and it is easy to follow, could you vote for my ible please?

[mjursic]

Voted. Going to try next week at the camp in Near Northern Ontario, Canada.. Thanks for the idea.

[Biggsy]

Thanks :-) let me know how it goes

[Quick-tune]

Oh yes... mention cakes and jessyratfink is on the case - hi jessy :)

[Biggsy]

I seriously reccomend it!

[cristyrain]

In US, more commonly we measure dry ingredients by volume not by weight. From the web:
Superfine (found as Confectioners, assuming weight would be about the same for Superfine) Sugar, 1 cup = 3.88 oz. in weight, so 4 oz. is 1.03 cups
White Flour, 1 cup = 4.409 oz. in weight, so 4 oz. is .91 cup.
4 oz. Margarine or Butter = 1/2 of a cube.
Eggs are eggs. Since we're roughing it, sounds like 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup Margarine or Butter and 2 eggs will get you pretty close.
Looking forward to trying this. Thank you!

[Biggsy]

if it works, can i ask that you give me a vote if you think it worthy? thanks

[cristyrain]

Sure! It will be a while before we're out camping, but will let you know!

[chrispix]

I just did this with a scale, but measuring out with cups as I went. It was more like 3/4 cup flour, 1 cup sugar. This made just enough for 4 oranges. We're heading out tomorrow, so I'll report back after the trip how it went.

[valkgurl]

You can always get POWDERED EGGS to avoid the germ issue entirely.

OR pasteurized eggs---Eggbeaters or the like.

But wiping the shells of the eggs should be just fine to avoid the transfer of anything on the OUTSIDE of the shell getting on the INSIDE of you.

Don't wash--the prior comment was right---it can "force" germs into the egg!

[kumiko]

That looks delicious. How do you normally teach this to your scouts? Which do you prepare ahead, which parts do the kids do? Take a photo with all the cakes in the fire please!

[Biggsy]

My scouts do regular outdoor cooking, i generally get them to do it along with me, with other leaders floating in support helping where people fall behind. To cut down on time i would make the wet mix before hand, or atleast the bulk of it (get some of the older ones to make a small batch of mix) i will be cooking them this weekend, and will try and get a good picture.

If you don't mind voting in the competitions, it would be nice to be in the running for SOMETHING :D

[trevormac]

TOO MUCH HASSLE.2XHANDFULS SELF RAISING W WATER TO DOUGH,FLATTEN IN FRYING PAN AND COOK EACH SIDE 3-4 MINS.EAT

[bodie0158]

I get the impression that you might be in Britain somewhere? So please forgive my American ignorance, but what is caster sugar?

[GordieGii]

Here in Canada it's often called Fruit Sugar, Berry Sugar or Instant or Rapid Disolving Sugar. Icing Sugar (which is what Powdered doughnuts (or donuts if you're American) are coated with) has corn starch in it to make the icing thick.

[silverknight]

That's weird, my other comment didn't show up. It's called caster/castor in the US too. @skinnyboy, I always thought superfine is another name for caster sugar. I know that's what Domino calls it at least.

[Laurpud]

You can get finer sugar just by whizzing granulated in a blender. Blend it too long though, & you'll get powdered sugar!

[SkinnE]

In the US, the closest thing to caster sugar is 'superfine', but you can make a straight substitution with granulated just fine in most cases. As you can imagine, sometimes the finer grains will dissolve more readily, or produce a different texture when not dissolved. Not a problem in this recipe, but beware of swapping in recipes measuring by volume (eg cups); 1 cup of superfine will contain more sugar in it than 1 cup of granulated.

[Biggsy]

Yes, sorry, thought it was fairly universal, castor sugar is a fine ground sugar used in baking :-)