Step by step homemade baking recipes
Today my guest host Paityn joins me on a Backpack Baking adventure! We are hiking to a local lookout in the Canadian Rocky Mountains where we use the Bemco Backpacking oven to make three different Oreo Mug Cakes. You can make these mug cakes in the microwave, or in a regular oven at home.
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It’s bear country here in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada. In fact, there was just a horrific grizzly attack recently, a couple of hours from our house. The man survived, but still, attacked, and mauled by a grizzly! Yikes!
This video is definitely one that is to be taken with good humour. We are having more fun with our videos, and I want you to have fun while you’re watching as well! Stepping outside the box (of our kitchen) keeps us interested, challenged, and hopefully adds an element to life that you might not see where you live. We are so lucky to live where we do, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and with our Backpack Baking series, we love to showcase our home turf!
This hike takes place on a local hike called “The Butte”, and it is located halfway between our city of Cranbrook, and the nearby one, Kimberley. It is about a 30-45 minute hike, and is one that can be done easily with kids, but when filming and hiking, it takes a couple of hours! Paul has recently started a new hobby, flying remote control aircraft’s (quadcopters, wings, planes etc), so we were loaded our backpacks up with the ingredients needed for baking, the quadcopter stuff, and the tools needed for the filming. It was a heavy load for the two of us. We need to hire a pack mule next time.
These bear poop cookies could be done a with a number of different add-in ingredients. I chose to use coconut, white chocolate chips, and pine nuts for optimal “poopness”. You could use other nuts, and ingredients if you prefer to have your scat look like something else. Black bears tend to eat a lot of berries around where we live, so the pine nuts were an essential add-in for my version.
Thanks to my mom for lending me her bear costume. Doesn’t everyone’s mom have a bear costume on stand-by for emergency bear videos? No? Oh. Well, my mom does! It must be the Kindergarten teacher in her. It’s her tickle trunk.
Making this pumpkin coffee cake at the end of our walk in the Cranbrook Community Forest was an awesome treat! My favourite thing about our Backpack Baking videos are the warm treats at the end of a usually hard activity. I know I’m supposed to say that my favourite part is “connecting with nature“, or “getting exercise”, but let’s be real, it’s the reward at the end.
This walk in our local recreation site is not very difficult and it’s one that we do every couple of weeks. It’s perfect for those days where you want to get out and get some fresh air, but don’t have a lot of time to devote to hiking. The view of the valley at the end is beautiful, as you can see in the video. Even though it’s not a hard hike, it was definitely a nice change to have a treat at the end and take some time to enjoy the view, as usually we’re rushing up, and then back down!
Even Ruby liked it..the walk/hike and the cake.
We are so fortunate to be able to live in one of the world’s most beautiful areas…the Rocky Mountains. They are within minutes of our door step and we have an amazing amount of hiking, and camping close by. Every year, I request that we make our yearly treck into a place called Fish Lake, which is located in the Top of the World Provincial park. It is about an hour drive from our home on the highway, and approximately another 45-60 minutes on a bush road. We have headed into Fish Lake during all seasons, but my favourite is always summertime. The lake at the top is stunningly clear and the hike in is warm and casual. It’s just over 6 kilometers in, and has a relatively small elevation gain . . . which of course is lovely when you’re carrying a 50 lb pack on your back!
Being that this is my absolute favourite place to backpack into, camp and enjoy the cell-phone free zone, the only thing I could imagine making it better is warm, fresh cake! I’ve always wanted to make a Pineapple Upside Down Cake, and I finally had the chance to do so in this trip. I thought it was perfect treat to be able to bake in the backpack oven. The colours from the pineapple and the cherries stood out beautifully against the stunning scenery.
Our friend Kelli joined us on this trip. She’s an avid hiker and camper, so we knew she’d be a great one to have along to enjoy the hike and scenery. Unfortunately once we got to camp, she had some problems with her allergies, so we didn’t get to see much of her. Or maybe she was just sick of us and was so happy to be rid of us! Just kidding Kelli! We knew she was in rough shape for a bit, but she powered through and was ready to bake by morning!
Paul’s been experimenting with some more of the camera work on our recent trips and videos, and I think he’s doing such an amazing job. In this one, he’s using the GoPro Black for the hiking scenes, and the time lapses. He still was using the DSLR for the baking footage. I love that he is so talented . . . definitely works in my favour 🙂
Reliving our Spring Break trip in Banff, our first hike was to Johnston Canyon (where we had our encounter with a yuppie pig) and our second was to Grotto Canyon. How could we NOT want to hike somewhere called the “Grotto”? It was a beautiful sunny early spring day. You know, one of those ones where the chill is still in the air, but the sun is finally warm on your skin?? It’s the best kind of weather!!
To get to Grotto canyon, we had to drive about a 15 minute drive from our condo in Banff. If you’re familiar with the area, it is closest to the town of Canmore.
The canyon is actually a creek bed, and during the winter months, the hike is actually on the frozen over Grotto Creek! We had to have our ice clamps on our hiking boots, so make sure you have something for grip if you’re doing this hike in the winter.
During Spring Break in March, Paul and I were able to take some much needed time off. We decided that the short drive to Banff was going to be our destination. We are super lucky to be so close to a world destination.
Going to Banff during Spring Break is a risky choice. The weather might be awesome- or you might be in a blizzard, wishing you packed your parka. The town might be packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists- or you could be rubbing elbows with the locals.
We were able to get a good deal on a condo close to town and thank goodness it was only the two of us, as I don’t think there would have been room for even Ruby to join us! It was super tiny and dated. But, we decided to make the best of it (since we didn’t plan on being in the room much anyway) and we got out on a couple of great hikes.
One of the hikes that we chose to start out on was the famous Johnston Canyon. Now, this is basically a walk along a canyon but it is very beautiful and worth it. Paul is a TRUE hiker . . . he wants to be out in the woods, stomping through the forest, establishing his own path, so this was definitely not his idea of a good time!! But, he sucked it up and we were able to get a good video out of it!
