Making a muffin with some camping gear...

I heard on a podcast that it's possible to make a muffin while camping and trekking. When i heard this i was utterly amazed. My current form of breakfast is cereal with milk powder + water. Horrible. But now, I could imagine waking up freezing in the middle of Thredbo and eating a nice hot muffin with only 10-15 minutes wait. I had to find out more.
So i popped off to Woolies to see what i could use. Betty Crocker's Just Add Milk, $3ish for 8 muffins in total and all you need is 165ml of milk, which can be supplemented with milk or BUTTERmilk powder. Yum.

I kinda did some maths and then decided, i have no scales so that was pretty much pointless and started mixing the milk and powder together until it was gooey. I hate baking, i have no idea what consistency its suppose to be. It kinda stuck to the spoon and then blobbed off. I figured that was good enough.

place a bit of tin to make sure it doesnt burn

put in muffin mix

steam steam steam away!

To make this muffin, they generally use steam baking which basically uses water to transfer the heat from the stove into hot air. Without the water it would take a longer and i think potentially damaging to the pot, though it has been done (maybe i'll give it a go later).

I had to make a little stand to keep my muffin container off the water. This was made with an old lasagna aluminum container which I had saved. A short bit cut and curved did the job really well. Then it was plonk the muffin in, boil away with the lid on.

soft soft muffin goodness

yumyum=P

so i gave it a good 10 minutes on the boil and it turned out great. No crusty muffin top but juicy, soft and yummy muffin innards.

After this i've tried it a few more times trying to use a pot cosy to extend the cooking time while increasing the muffin size. I think you could easily make a regular muffin size with 1 ounce of fuel + you get a hot drink at the end as well =)

i think a few more runs and i can bank this technique for the trail.

Whitebox Stove

Preparation begins. Since, i'm camping by myself i figured i needed something lighter then the regular butane burner. Since it's only over 2 nights essentially i have no need for all that weight thats in the fuel canister. One of the best alternatives is an alcohol stove of which apparently the Whitebox stove is one of the best. Mainly cos its crushproof and is big enough to put a stove can on, so saving me a stand. so i ordered it from ebay.So the alcohol stove does everything it promises. It's boils fast and keeps the pop upright. Was able to boil water with minimal issues. The main problem i have with it is its somehwat fuel hungry. It's thick aluminium takes quite long to prime which can be fixed with a wick apparently. Other then that, if you take care puttin the pot on teh stove you wont have the flames licking up the sides, or spilt water. Both i experienced during testing =)

A crucial component of using an alcohol stove is fuel efficiency. Pan frying food most likely out of question. Using it with a pot cosy allows you to extend your cooking time by basically allowing the food to cook itself. Apparently, this is what a dutch oven is suppose to be.
To make one, I purchased a $3 windscreen from the local cheapo store and basically cut out the pieces i needed and duct tape them all together. This slightly different to the designs you see on the internet in that I double walled it everywhere. The trickest part was the base which comprises of a trace of the bottom + wrapping the can with the double wall insulation and making another trace. Using duct tape, this was all stuck together =) So. to put it all to the test, I decided to cook a packet pasta for a snack. So to do this, I get 1.5 cups of water to boil with the whitebox stove. Add the pasta packet and let it boil again. This took about 5 minutes and was unexpectedly fast. After the fire goes out, place it in the pot cosy and wrap my jumper around it. 20 minutes later i checked it and the pasta was soft, hot and done.

Woot! on the trail, i'll have some salami in there for extra zing!