Wow. I was gone for a long time! And what's worse is that I didn't do a single craft project while we were on the road (gasp!) We did however get to try out this awesome idea from Bread & Honey while we were camping in Tennessee. And it worked! The cakes were absolutely delicious (and so was the fresh squeezed OJ the next morning). We ended up reusing the orange hulls and baking a second batch but we still had lots of leftover batter. Which is hard to get rid of in a campsite...I mean, what do you do with cake batter? Next time we will bring more oranges so we can use up all of the batter and save the tasty cakes for breakfast, lunch and day hike snacks. They do travel well.
So here is the idea in a nutshell: Take your oranges and cut off just the tops.
Then hollow them out (this gets messy) and strain the pulp for fresh-squeezed OJ in the morning (this part is optional, of course, but fresh OJ is a special treat while camping).
Once they are all hollowed out, take your orange hulls and fill them 3/4 full with your cake batter.
Add the lids, wrap the oranges in tin foil and set them in the fire where the coals are nice and hot...you will start to smell them baking...
Now try to be patient (it's so hard!) and leave the cakes to bake for at least 10 minutes before carefully removing them (tongs are VERY helpful at this point) and voila! Freshly baked delicious cakey goodness at your campsite. Boy will your neighbors be impressed...
The baked cake has just a hint of orange flavor (duh, thanks Kara) so we are planning to try chocolate next time and see how that is...yum!
