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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.