Doughboys

So I'm hanging out on pinterest (of course) and see a pin of something familiar.  But when I click on it to read about it, I realize the way we do it is SO. MUCH. COOLER!  When we go camping, we like to have doughboys cooked over the fire for breakfast.  All you need is a dowel rod (about the diameter of your thumb), a can of biscuits, and a fire.  Oh, and whatever you want to go IN your doughboy.  The possibilities are endless.

We had our backyard fixed this past spring and it is soooo worth it.  We'd been here for YEARS and not been able to go in our yard and enjoy it.  Actually, Memorial Day weekend in 2006 Eric and Owen (who had JUST turned 2) decided to camp out back there.  And Eric ended up with the worst case of poison ivy I've ever seen.  We're talking about a big, huge blister the size of a golf ball on his arm.  If you get queasy easy, skip this part, but when he popped the blister there was a semi-solid glob of puss that came out of it.  It was so gross.  He ended up having to go to urgent care to get them to look at it and they brought all the doctors and nurses in to ogle at it!  When he went to work he had his arm wrapped in gauze and the guys ribbed him and basically called him a wuss.  So he unwrapped his arm and when they saw it, well they asked him to cover it back up!!!  Anyway, NOW our backyard is useable and we've been trying to use it as much as possible.  I'll try to do a whole update on that later (if I don't forget).

So we've had a couple campouts in our backyard.  The first one was with my mommy friends and all their kids.  Several moms weren't brave enough to give the camping a go ;-) so they came for the cookout and hanging out and went home to sleep in their comfy beds.  If I remember correctly we had 5 moms and 9 kids stay the night in our backyard.  So. Much. Fun.  Have I mentioned I <3 camping???

The view of our little camping compound from the deck.

Anyway, Eric was out of town for that experience so later in the summer we invited my good friend Lillie and her family to come camp with us.  We had a great time, as we always do with her family.  And for breakfast the next morning we made doughboys.  I've always made them with "whop biscuits" (that's the refrigerated canned biscuits you WHOP on the counter to open), but all I could find in the fridge was crescent roll dough so we improvised.  And it worked great!

Mmmmmm.  So yummy.  And Lillie was kind enough to bring us ANOTHER jar of her homemade peach preserves.  We made quick work of the first jar.  Those peach preserves were perfect inside these doughboys.  We also tried scrambled eggs and crumbled up sausage in them.  Also yum!  Butter, cinnamon, and sugar is also a must-try combo.

The trick is to make sure you do a good job wrapping it so you don't lose all your filling.  If using biscuits, stretch the biscuit out until it's about 6 inches long.  Start at the end of your dowel rod and coil the biscuit around.  Make sure to seal it up well at all the seams.  Hold it over the fire and rotate periodically to brown it on all sides.  Once it's cooked it should slide off the rod with a gentle twist.  If you twist too hard it will split open at the seams.  There's also a right and a wrong direction to twist it, but it depends on which way you coiled it.  Also, the first couple times you use the dowel rods for this it will stick more.  I've never tried using Pam or anything but I guess that might help.  After a few times though it will kind of get seasoned and will work better.