Dutch oven cooking is an outdoor skill all its own. In coming weeks and months a series of Dutch over cooking recipes and tips and tricks will be added to this site. But for now, let’s discuss one of the simplest and most tasty desserts you can prepare in your cast iron oven … a dump cake!
Here’s just one variation, but the choices are nearly endless: Cut the entire stick of butter into about ½ inch wide pieces. Drop three or four pieces into the bottom of the Dutch oven. Open a box of yellow cake mix and dump it into the oven. Open a couple cans of canned pie filling (try apple or cherry, or mix the two) and dump the contents into the cake mix. Now drop the remaining pieces of butter on top of the fruit. Take a large spook and make a couple figure eights through the contents, loosely stirring them together. Put the lid on the Dutch oven and you’re ready to bake.
Pull some coals from the fire and place a few in a circle just slightly larger than the bottom of your Dutch oven. If your oven has legs (which it will if it’s a true Dutch oven) then set it atop the coals. If your oven doesn’t have legs than it like is a cast iron stew pot, or “self basting” pot. Don’t worry, it’ll work fine as long as you set it on a metal trivet to keep the bottom from resting entirely on the coals.
Now place a few coals on the lid of the Dutch oven. Give it about 18-20 minutes and check it quickly … I say quickly to keep from losing all the heat from inside the pot. If it still needs to cook some, you might need to freshen up the coals underneath with some hot replacements. The same goes for the coals on top. And rotate the load about 45 degrees every 5-8 minutes or so for more even heating. Once you remove the lid and the contents have a few bubbles popping through and the cake mix is a golden brown it’s time to brush the coals off the lid, set the oven off the bottom coals and let the contents cool enough to enjoy.
Hopefully you brought along a tub of ice cream in the cooler. If not, it’s still great as it is or with a little cold milk drizzled over each serving.
Here’s a great place to practice your Dutch oven cooking:
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