As Outdoor Living Skills director this past summer, I made a lot of bannock with campers, nearly every week. For those of you who don’t know, bannock is a cake or bread-like snack made from flour and water that we cook over campfires at camp. It starts as a thick dough that I make in the kitchen many mornings, then we build a fire at OLS, find roasting sticks to wrap the bannock around, and roast it over the fire. We usually eat it at the end of fire building sessions as a reward for building an awesome fire. It sometimes ends up burnt, full of bark, or just plain dropped in the fire, but when its done right, bannock is one of the tastiest treats at camp. People often ask me for my bannock recipe, since I make extra delicious chocolate bannock, so I thought that I’d share it here:
– 4 parts tea biscuit mix or flour + a bit of salt and baking powder.
– 1 part brownie mix, cocoa and sugar, or hot chocolate mix
– ½ part brown sugar
– chocolate chips to taste
– dash of cinnamon
Mix all the dry ingredients together, and then slowly add water and stir well until the bannock is thick and sticky, but consistent throughout. Then, build yourself a campfire, find a roasting stick, and enjoy! And yes, kids, you can eat it raw if you want to.
