Gil's LotD

This recipe was taken from the Everyday Dutch Oven blog. As things neared towards Thanksgiving he started putting up seasonal recipes and descriptions of his (elaborate) Thanksgiving Dutch Oven setups. I saw this recipe earlier in the month and tossed it into my file because of the cranberry. Also, right before Thanksgiving I went to the local Tractor Supply Store for their Black Friday deals. They had a regular height 12 incher for $15 (marked down from $20). This recipe was the first thing I made in that oven and I look forward to using it for future baked things. It was also my first time in a Tractor Supply Store and I got to have a good look around: they did have an aisle of tractor supplies. Outside of that they're a dry goods store with a fair amount of cast iron.

I baked this for Thanksgiving lunch following the printed instructions sans pecans. I went with around 18 top/7 bottom but I don't remember exact numbers. I was also using already-burned coals so I just tried to make a ring and went from there. It cooked for a good 60 minutes with rotations every 15. I was getting up during the meal to turn the lid.

The final result was done but was not brown on top because of the dying coals. The resulting cobbler was incredible. The apple and the cranberry went together well and the topping excellent. All of the other desserts were also chilled setting this one apart from the pack and making it go well with ice cream. I wish I could have eaten more warm but I was already stuffed with Thanksgiving dinner and had only room for a small scoop of this incredibly rich cobbler. I ate all the leftovers cold. Oddly enough the cranberries picked up a bit of sparkly tartness which made them taste almost carbonated when cold. This is an excellent recipe and is certainly one I will break out again in the future.

The smashing success of the first recipe drove me to try and reproduce it about a week after the first cake. Although it was a while ago I think the two things I did differently were using tinfoil and redoing the coals. I think I was at 4 on the bottom and 18-19 at the top but there may have been 5 on the bottom. The tinfoil was used to help with the cake flip which came out perfectly this time.

I guess I added far too much nutmeg in this batch. Instead of a subtle nutmeg flavor it was overwhelming. Maybe the tinfoil kept too much nutmeg out of the bottom of the pan? If I do this again I'll probably do half the nutmeg in the batter and none in the topping.

Despite everything working against me this recipe was delicious. It was taken from the Yahoo Dutch Oven mailing list. No pictures but it wasn't a pretty cake at all.

3 C. fresh rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch slices
1 C. sugar
2 tsp. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 C. butter or margarine, melted
Batter:
1-1/2 C. all-purpose flour
3/4 C. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 C. butter or margarine, melted
2/3 C. milk
1 egg
sweetened whip cream, optional

Place rhubarb in a greased 10 inch dutch oven. Combine sugar, flour & nutmeg; sprinkle over rhubarb. Drizzle with butter.
For batter, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt & nutmeg in a mixing bowl. Add butter, milk and egg; beat mixture until smooth. Spread over rhubarb mixture.
Bake at 350° (21 coals for a 10" 14top/7 bottom) for 35 minutes or until the cake tests done. Loosen edges immediately and invert onto serving dish. Serve warm, topped with whipped cream in desired. 8 - 10 servings.

I followed everything as stated, including coal count. However, the recipe calls for a 10 incher and I used my 12. Everything was fine but I probably would up the rhubarb count from 3 cups to get a bit better coverage on the bottom. I also baked it for about 40 minutes and it came out slightly burnt in the middle bottom despite rotating the oven. That's probably the fault of lazy coal placement on the bottom. The flip was not very smooth: the cake sorta folded over itself in one part and I burned myself. I also lost a lot of rhubarb topping burnt and stuck to the bottom of the pan. Reading up on cake flips on the dutch oven mailing list I guess people use tinfoil for proper upside-down flips, if this cake is repeated (and it will be!) I'll have to do it in foil.

The topping perfectly captured what sugar and rhubarb should taste like. The cake was delicious and the butter and nutmeg gave a taste that was subtly buttery, creamy and nutmeggy. Up next is either a repeat of this or a rhubarb pie attempt. I may also need to reach out to friends or the general internet for more rhubarb!

The last cookie was a success. However, it was kind of a pain to get the warm cookie out of the bottom of the oven. While catching up on the dutch oven mailing list I happened to see a thread that mentioned that you can cook in the lid with the entire oven upside down for pies and other baked goods. I call it dutch oven hard mode.

I did this a few weeks ago and didn't think to take any pictures. The coals were something like 10 bottom / 24 top and it sat for around 45 minutes. I made one unfortunate mistake: while glancing over the ingredient list I saw the word "Baking" and reached for baking powder. The resulting cookie was ok but fluffy and cake like. It was also a bit dry/burnt because the puffy cookie had a different surface appearance that caused me to leave it on too long. With the coal count I gave a properly done recipe should be done in 30.

Next up: baked beans! Finally!

A giant cookie takes the entire batch of cookie dough and puts it into the bottom of the dutch oven. My recipe was the cookie recipe off the back of the Toll House bag. The result was delicious and more food than expected! I have a picture of the finished recipe that I can put up later.

I did this with 20 top / 8 bottom coals as an increase from the previous attempts to get 350 degree ovens in this weather. After 30 minutes of baking the batter was melting but not browning. I expected it to be mostly done by then. I took four coals off the bottom and put them on top. Finally, after an hour of total baking I pulled the thing. The result was done (toothpick test) but not as well as I would like. The top or bottom were barely crunchy. Maybe I need to up the coals even more. It was still around freezing.

Yet another recipe from the excellent Dutch Oven Madness. I prepared and executed this recipe according to spec. It cooked for about 25 minutes with a rotation at about 15 minutes.

These were fantastic! They weren't moist but they had a rich cocoa taste. Because this was done in my twelve incher the brownies were oddly thin. This recipe is a solid choice for a dutch oven dessert.

This dessert was once again taken from the excellent Dutch Oven Madness. The only variations of note were usage of a 12 incher instead of a 10 and an extra quarter cup of sour cream. I think both were detrimental to the result: the larger size meant a harder to cut cake (each slice was about 2/3 cream filling 1/3 cake mix) and the extra sour cream gave the impression the batter was moist to the point of being undercooked. Both fixes would lead to a neater, more easily served snack. I certainly found it tasty and will probably make another attempt with slightly better control of the dough on the sides and more coals on top. Be liberal with the raspberry jam, I've got 2/3 of a jar that can't be used for much more than toast and this recipe.

My first recipe from the excellent blog Dutch Oven Madness. This woman has turned into the primary inspiration for this blog and the primary supplier of new and exciting recipes. Her goal is to blog a year's worth of dutch oven food cooked for her family. I am so very, very grateful for her blog.

I produced this in low-light conditions of a garage at night with a single light bulb illuminating the construction of the dessert. It came out quite the success. The recipe called for a 10 incher dutch oven but my 12 incher worked just fine. I followed the instructions to take out half of the oatmeal crumb part and I still had quite a bit left over to cover the bottom and make a top. The end result was eaten warm, frozen, thawed and put into the fridge. At all stages of the process the dessert was tasty. I will probably retry with a bit less brown sugar because it seemed that taste was dominant over others. Pecans complement the sweetness incredibly well (which I probably could have predicted with my love of pecan pie). However, I am well aware that there are plenty of pecan haters so a reproduction without pecans would still go over well. I plan on doing so as a gift for a friend.