Dutch oven camp cooker

A Girl Scout training course recently introduced me to outdoor cooking with a Dutch oven-- not the kind you use on the stovetop, but the kind with legs, where you pile coals on top and underneath to cook your food:



In advance of actually taking this camping, I've been trying a few things in my back yard. After 2 loaves of slightly gummy cornbread, and one very sludgy chocolate "cake", I finally nailed this apple pie:



Anyone else cooking with a camp oven?

Cheers, Jen

Not yet but now I want to!!!!

I learned through the Boy Scouts and have used a Dutch oven extensively in camping. Our troop has a big set of recipes online at:
http://troop23.org/cooking.html#Recipes
I have used this corn bread recipe and it is very good - especially if you add a can of creamed corn.
You can also do chili with either corn bread or biscuit cooked on the surface of the chili.
Pretty much anything you can do in an oven at home, you can do in a Dutch oven.
It mainly takes practice to learn how to manage your temperatures. You need more coals on the top than on the bottom.

I've used them often while on camping trips in Australia, where they call them camp ovens. The classic Australian camp bread, known as damper, is quite nice cooked in one of these ovens. One of the best meals I had on my first trip to Australia was lamb, pumpkin, and garlic cooked for a long time in one of these Dutch ovens (or kettle oven, which we learned at Culinary Historians this last weekend is a name often used to avoid the confusion of there being so many other types of Dutch ovens). It's a great utensil and does wonderful things with a bit of practice. If I had a backyard, I'd probably own one.

SueF forgot to mention that we've done dutch oven cooking at at least one LTH Picnic, including a curry, a cake and cornbread.

Cool, thanks everyone! The Troop 23 recipe collection is a gold mine and the Australian damper bread sounds great-- I bet that no-knead bread would work great, if I could modulate the heat properly so that it would cook through. I still need to work on that-- this pie was almost overcooked.

Cheers, Jen