Hi, I'm Sophie, and I bloody love camping and looking at camping food hacks on Pinterest. I have attempted some general camping hacks before, but I decided it was time to try out some popular Pinterest camping food hacks to see if they actually work.
We took our tent to the beautiful Dorset countryside on a Friday night and prepared for a wild weekend of Pinteresting cooking. Here's what happened:
1. Campfire s'mores cones.
Method: Stick marshmallows and chocolate chips into an ice cream cone, wrap in foil and put on the embers of your BBQ/fire.
The cones after some time melting on the BBQ.
Did it work? Yes, but essentially this is a way to make s'mores with none of the mess, and none of the fun. They're nowhere near as exciting as holding a marshmallow on a stick over a flame, and ice cream cones are also nowhere near as good as regular graham crackers/digestive biscuits. Basically I hated this "hack" and nobody should punish their children with it.
2. Cinnamon rolls baked in an orange.
First of all it was really bloody difficult to get the flesh out of the orange. Here I am completely failing at it:
I ended up squeezing the juice out after faffing around with a knife attracting wasps for ages. This recipe is also extremely messy, which is a little annoying when you're in a farmer's field a 15-minute walk from a sink.
The dough was a bit warm so trying to get it into the oranges was a bit fiddly.
The instructions on the packet of cinnamon rolls say do not freeze, so keeping dough at the right temperature for cutting and baking is not very practical on a campsite in summer.
It did not work very well.
Instead we tried various different methods of cooking the rolls on the BBQ.
The ones in foil sort of cooked!
These tasted sort of OK, but they're very sickly and were a little bit raw inside. They were definitely not worth an hour of preparation, and we realised afterwards that we could have driven to a bakery and bought one in less time, and for less money.
3. Cake baked in an orange.
Method: Pinterest says you can easily bake a cake in an orange on a grill! Simply pour the prepared cake mix batter into half an orange, stick the other half on top, wrap in foil, and put it on the grill.
(Please forgive me for the lumps in the cake mix. I tried.)
We had learned from our cinnamon roll mistakes and managed to magically peel the orange!
My girlfriend did this. It was honestly one of the greatest things I have ever witnessed.
We then put the cake batter into the orange, wrapped it in foil, and put it on the BBQ.
Please excuse the sunburn. I deeply regret not reapplying my suncream.
And after a realllly long time on the heat it looked like this.
It was meant to take 20 minutes, but after almost 45 minutes on the heat it looked like this. It would again probably cost less money and take less time to just buy some cake.
Did it work? NOPE. While this might work on a regular grill with a cover, or on a big campfire, it definitely doesn't work on a £2 Tesco disposable BBQ.
4. Make a candle out of an orange.
The tiny flame!
5. Campfire croissants on a stick.
Method: Wrap pre-made croissant dough (crescent dough) round a stick and toast over the BBQ or campfire.
We held the dough over the BBQ for about 10 minutes.
This was quite fun! Though probably not one to do if you want to have a quick breakfast before a long day of hiking.
Did it work? Yes! Finally something actually worked and wasn't a completely pain in the arse. As long as you keep the dough reasonably thin this works quite well, and it tastes pretty good.
6. Baked campfire apples.
Method: Core an apple, fill it with dried fruit, sugar, and cinnamon. Wrap in foil and put on the BBQ or in your campfire.
This wasn't actually TOO awful.
The cooked hot dog in a croissant bun.
8. S'moreos.
Method: Toast mashmallow, open Oreo, put a piece of chocolate and the melted marshmallow in it.
Did it work? Yesssssssss.
Overall thoughts.
Doing these hacks was quite fun, although honestly most of them were kind of a pain. They're don't really feel like hacks when they seem to take more time and effort than just doing a normal BBQ. Also a lot of them on Pinterest appear to being made in gardens rather than on an actual campsite with very little access to cooking equipment/fridges etc.
I think we'll probably just stick to regular BBQ food next time, but I'd definitely make a s'moreo again.
ALSO: This is just some of the mess we had to clear up after attempting these hacks.
