Camping and Backpacking Cookies
Soft cookies that make a great camping, walking, hiking or backpacking breakfast, trail snack, lunch or dessert. Mix and match as needed. Plenty of calories and fibre.
As you make them yourself you know what goes into them – they may be not healthy but they are healthier than shop bought snacks.
- Prep time: 10 – 15 minutes
- Cook time: 10 – 12 minutes (takes 11 minutes in my oven)
- Makes 12 good sized biscuits
The amount of sugar can be reduced if you find the cookies too sweet.
A couple of notes – I created this recipe from trial and error and adapting several other recipes I had tried. You can of course eat these at home or work or anywhere else!
Ingredients:
- 100g butter
- 100g to 150g soft dark brown sugar (your choice)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 100g plain flour
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 125g porridge oats
- 75g sultanas (or 75g of chocolate chips)
- 25g mixed seeds (optional – I get mine from Aldi in the Foodie Range)
Technique
Preheat the oven to 200C (I have a fan oven)
I use one mixing bowl and my electronic scales so I can add and weigh the ingredients as I go along by resetting the scales to zero. It reduces washing up and speeds things up.
Cream the butter and sugar together well
Add the egg and vanilla extract mix well
Then mix in the remaining ingredients until they are well incorporated
Let the mixture stand in the fridge for 5 minutes
Remove from the fridge and form into 12 equal balls (you can use an ice-cream scoop to portion the mixture – Great British Bake-off tip)
Place on a lightly oiled or non-stick tray – the mixture balls will spread whilst cooking – I place six on a 25cm x 35cm non-stick tray
I cook mine until the edges just start to turn dark and the centre golden brown (see photo).
The cookies are very soft when they come out of the oven so leave them for a few minutes to firm up before using a spatula to lift them onto a cooling rack.
Now make a good coffee and whilst the biscuits are still warm but firm enough the handle sit down and enjoy the coffee and the biscuit.
The rest can go in an airtight box.
When going walking or camping I carry mine in a re-purposed plastic box that a takeaway curry came in.
Options
Experiment with the 100g of sultanas and seeds. I have tried:
- raisins
- mixed fruit
- chopped dried mango and papaya
- roughly chopped cashew nuts, walnuts or peanuts
- Various chocolate chips
- try 1 tsp of ginger with 50g of dark chocolate chips and 50g of golden sultanas
You can pick and mix the spices and the amounts to your taste:
- all cinnamon or all nutmeg
- All spice
- add some ginger or all ginger
- Caraway seeds
- I like a teaspoon of Chai spice mix
My Chai spice mix
- 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 3 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons ground allspice
- 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons ground cardamom
- 1 teaspoon ground cloves
- You can add up to a teaspoon of ground black pepper for a fiery hit
This mix gets stored in an airtight container. Try a teaspoon of this mixed with a measure of tea leaves or ground coffee for Chai tea or coffee.