…did I tell you I was a cub leader?  Had so much fun on Friday evening building fires and cooking on them.  The cubs loved it.

I made damper dough so they could wrap it around sticks to cook it over the hot embers – something that could be done over a BBQ.  Simply mix self raising flour with water until you have a soft dough (but not too soft that it drops of the stick easily) – about 500g flour to 400mls of water.  Then stand, trying to avoid the smoke, holding the dough over the embers, rotating it slowly, until it is a nice golden brown and is hollow when you tap it.

Of course, many of them were a little charred and I am sure some of them were a little doughy inside but loved all the same.  Especially when eaten with hot dogs cooked in a billy over the fire.  In fact one cub said it was as good as bread from their favourite boulangerie – amazing the effect when you make it yourself!!  I am pretty sure it wasn’t that good!

You could posh up the dough a bit with herbs or some cheese.  Serve it with some garlic butter or dip it in hummus or other dips.  Or go for the sweet option and drizzle honey or syrup, slather in nutella or jam.

We also had some fun with oranges.  If you slice the top of and scoop out the insides (and eat it – so most of the kids had a portion of fruit, cunning!!) you have a fairly heat resistant cooking utensil.  Crack an egg into the scooped out orange and then set it in the embers.  We also used the orange skins as giant cup cake cases with some cake mix.

The eggs cooked OK but taste tests were more thumbs down – but as this was all about cooking with minimum utensils, backwoods style it was more an experiment.  Unfortunately the cake mix didn’t have time to cook through – an hour and a half is not long enough to get 17 cubs sorted, a fire lit and burned down to even embers and cook cake!  It will be tried again as I think orange infused cake will taste better than orange infused eggs.

Cubs loved it – eating their damper twists and hotdogs, scooping out oranges and going home smelling of woodsmoke.  A fun way to get kids experimenting with food – build a fire!

Have to be honest and say this is not my photo!!  I was too busy to take photos!