Campfire Cooking: Rob Roy Cookies

If you’re looking for something new to grill, how about cookies? Yeah, you read that right. Do some serious campfire cooking with these gluten free Rob Roy Cookies in cast iron.

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Campfire Cooking

Campfire cooking, I have discovered, is part science and part art. And part smoke in your eyes. I’ve been trying to improve my campfire cooking skills this past year as its not something I grew up doing.

Fortunately, I married an Eagle Scout so my husband has contributed his expertise with fire (he’s a bit of a pyro anyway) and we’ve experimented with all kinds of dinners and side dishes. I finally decided it was time for dessert!

Rob Roy Cookies

I first came across the recipe for Rob Roy Cookies in Amy Cox-Jones’s fine, whole foods, seasonal eating cookbook, A World Of Wisdom. I adapted the recipe a bit to fit our family’s tastes but the recipe was great on its own. This cookbook is fabulous for seasonal eating ideas, especially if you have a family.

Campfire Cooking – Rob Roy Cookies!

Campfire Cooking: Rob Roy Cookies

Yield: 2 Dozen

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Leaf Wrap Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Rob Roy’s are a traditional Scottish oatmeal cookie but these are prepared on open flame. Use cast iron pan or a more traditional method of leaf-wrapped cookies on the open flame grill.

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Ingredients

• 1 Cup Honey
• 1 Tsp Sea Salt
• 1/2 Tsp Cloves
• 1/2 Tsp Nutmeg
• 2 Fresh Eggs
• 2 Tbsp. Sour Cream
• 2 1/2 Cup Flour We use Bob's Gluten Free Flour
• 1 Tsp Baking Soda
• 2 Cups Rolled Oats
• 1 Cup Raisins - Optional
• 1 Cup Chocolate Chips, Nuts, Whatever - Optional

Instructions

1. Mix all ingredients and place by the spoonfuls on a greased cookie sheet.
2. Bake at 375 F for 10 to 12 minutes.
3. OR follow the directions below for a campfire cooking experience.

COOKIE PIE IN A SKILLET OR DUTCH OVEN

1. Build your fire until you have a nice mess of coals.
2. Take a large, cast iron pan and add butter – grease its bottom and up and down the sides. You can also use a Dutch Oven because you’ll need a lid anyway. You can portion out individual cookies or, to save time and create a cookie pie, just mush the batter in its entirety into the bottom of the pan.
3. Put the pan on the coals, cover with a cast iron lid (or another cast iron pan), place coals on the top and bake about 20-30 minutes.
4. There’s no exact cook time with any campfire cooking because speed depends on how hot your coals are. Check your cookie pie after about 15 minutes to make sure its humming along. If you’re afraid the bottom is too hot, put another cast iron pan underneath your cookie pan to provide some protection. You can remove some coals, too, if its looking to burn.

LEAF WRAPPED COOKIES ON THE GRILL

1. Gather one edible leaf per cookie (like grape leaves), as big a leaf as big as you can find. You can wash them, if you like.
2. Oil the back of the clean leaf with a high quality, high smoke point oil like avocado or olive. We did a batch of leaves that we pre-soaked for a few hours in plain water to see if they’d keep the cookies from sticking to the leaf. The results were basically the same for pre-soaking and oiling. Oiling is faster and adds a bit of healthy fat.
3. Place the leaf face down so that its back is looking up at you. It’s possible to wrap them the other way around, but the leaf wants to curve back on itself.
4. Place a 1-2 inch ball of cookie dough inside your leaf and squish it flattish (about 1/2″ thick) with your fingers.
5. Fold over each side of the leaf and then fold down the top. Most leaves were easy to secure with the stem by gently curving up the stem. Poke two holes, about a half an inch apart on the leaf, with the cookie dough nestled inside. Slip the stem through the two holes and it should hold well enough. Sometimes you may need to use a small twig to hold things in place, but just do your best.
6. You can place these cookies into a greased, cast iron pan or Dutch Oven and follow the instructions above for the cookie pie.
7. OR you can preheat a flat stone in the coals and place the cookies on top of it to bake. Cover the cookies on the stone with a cast iron pan and bake for 20-30 minutes, checking them after about 10 minutes.
8. Remove them to a cooling rack or an obliging log and wait for them to be temperate enough to handle. The cookies taste best when they’re still warm, but they might stick to the leaf more if they’re not completely cooled. Its your call. We aren't above scraping out the cookie remains with our teeth, but you might be more couth than we are.
   

Cast Iron or Leaf-Wrapped?

If you’re looking for a bit of adventure and want to try some campfire cooking, this recipe lends itself well to a cast iron pan and/or being leaf-wrapped and placed on a stone in the coals.

My kids had so much fun peeling away the leaf to see what was inside. For an even more entertaining option, instead of simply dropping these cookies off to a friend or neighbor, invite them over to have a hand in making these campfire cooking creations.

FYI, these cookies work for breakfast, too.

Campfire Cooking Requires Good Coals

The hardest part so far for me with campfire cooking is making good coals and keeping them going. From what I read, that IS the hardest part.

We have a 3-foot in diameter concrete circle that serves as our outdoor cooking area. Its fabulous for safety and even for some cooking, especially homemade s’mores (the true purpose of any campfire, after all). BUT my husband and I have decided that we’d like to create a kind of trough for outdoor cooking.

There’s s’more and meat grilling campfire cooking and then there’s campfire COOKING. You need room and you need coal production to get an entire meal cranked out. For more information on how to cook over an open flame, try this book. 

To learn to build a good cook fire, click here.

Design so You Don’t Have to Use Charcoal

My husband has designed a hip-level, cement trough where we’ll keep a fire going at one end. In the middle, we’ll move active coals into a pile. At the end, we’ll have various items cooking, adding coals as we need them.

Even with this design, we’ll still need to move quickly to get the coals distributed and cooking at an even temperature.

Most people do their campfire cooking with charcoal briquettes. That’s a great way to keep the temperature regulated but they only sell them to people with money, sadly. Besides, if we hit a time where they aren’t available to buy, I don’t want my cool campfire cooking skill to fall apart.

I get very Caroline Ingalls-y over this, like I did with the line drying. I’m GONNA figure it out!

Campfire Cooking Options for Cookies

For these cookies, you have a few cooking options in the outdoor fire (tell me if you know of one that I’ve missed). The first one is pretty straight forward.

Cookie Pie in a Skillet or Dutch Oven

1. Build your fire until you have a nice mess of coals.
2. Take a large, cast iron pan and add butter – grease its bottom and up and down the sides. You can also use a Dutch Oven because you’ll need a lid anyway. You can portion out individual cookies or, to save time and create a cookie pie, just mush the batter in its entirety into the bottom of the pan.
3. Put the pan on the coals, cover with a cast iron lid (or another cast iron pan), place coals on the top and bake about 20-30 minutes.
4. There’s no exact cook time with any campfire cooking because speed depends on how hot your coals are. Check your cookie pie after about 15 minutes to make sure its humming along. If you’re afraid the bottom is too hot, put another cast iron pan underneath your cookie pan to provide some protection. You can remove some coals, too, if its looking to burn.
   

   

Leaf-Wrapped Cookies on the Grill

If you want to create gift wrapped, leaf cookies, then the first thing you need to do is locate some large, non-poisonous leaves.

We’ve tried maple, sunflower, and grape because that’s what we have in our yard. The sunflower works OK but is really brittle. The maple is fine but not very tasty (you inevitable get some leaf with your cookie as you eat).

The best leaves to use are grape leaves, which are traditionally used to make dolmas so you know they’re edible!

To Wrap Your Cookie Dough

You can check out the graphic below and follow the steps, or read these instructions below:

1. Gather one leaf per cookie, as big a leaf as big as you can find. You can wash them, if you like.
2. Oil the back of the clean leaf with a high quality, high smoke point oil like avocado or olive. We once used a batch of leaves that we pre-soaked for a few hours in plain water to see if they’d keep the cookies from sticking to the leaf. The results were basically the same for pre-soaking and oiling. Oiling is faster and adds a bit of healthy fat.
3. Place the leaf face down so that its back is looking up at you. It’s possible to wrap them the other way around, but the leaf wants to curve back on itself.
4. Place a 1-2 inch ball of cookie dough inside your leaf and squish it flattish (about 1/2″ thick) with your fingers.
5. Fold over each side of the leaf and then fold down the top. Most leaves were easy to secure with the stem by gently curving up the stem.
6. Poke two holes, about a half an inch apart on the leaf, with the cookie dough nestled inside.
7. Slip the stem through the two holes and it should hold well enough. Sometimes you may need to use a small twig to hold things in place, but just do your best.

Baking the Cookies on the Flames

1. You can place these cookies into a greased, cast iron pan or Dutch oven and follow the instructions above for the cookie pie.
2. Or you can preheat a flat stone in the coals and place the cookies on top of it to bake. Cover the cookies on the stone with a cast iron pan and bake for 20-30 minutes, checking them after about 10 minutes.
3. Remove them to a cooling rack or an obliging log and wait for them to be temperate enough to handle.

The cookies taste best when they’re still warm, but they might stick to the leaf more if they’re not completely cooled. It’s your call.

We weren’t above scraping out the cookie remains with our teeth, but you might be more couth than we are.

Homemade Raisins

We used our own raisins, of which we are justly proud this year – its the first time we’ve made them from our very own grapes.

–>>How to Make Your Own Raisins<<–