Step by step homemade baking recipes
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.
The positive aspect to this shoot was that I got to work together with Maangchi! She is a legendary Korean chef and has a YouTube channel of the same name- Maangchi. She is the sweetest and spunkiest person you will ever meet! Make sure you check it out, subscribe to her and check out the random costumes/accessories she wears in her videos . . . she’s an inspiration to me to be more relaxed with my videos and to have more FUN. Earlier in the day, before the security guard incident, we shot a video for her channel called Kimchi Stew and she showed me the ins and outs of how to make it, which is a backpacking type meal in Korea. It was so good. Like, so good. I hadn’t ever had Korean food before as I don’t count the one time I have tried kimchi as “Korean food”. The stew was spicy, hearty and crunchy, which is unlike any stew I had ever had in Canada before . . . and it had fish in it.
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 🙂
In this video we show you how to make corn bread in the great outdoors. In case you’re wondering, this corn bread recipe can be baked in any oven if you feel like staying in the comforts of your home.
The trail we visited is called Silver Springs Overlook, and is located near Elko, British Columbia, Canada. More information can be found here: http://www.janicestrong.com/PDFfiles/SilverSpringLakes.pdf
You can learn more about the gear we used in this video here: http://youtu.be/9nmTG6erHq4
If you’ve been keeping up with us for the last little while, you know that we have jumped into the exciting world of Backpack Baking!! It is the absolutely BEST! I do have to tell you that it is the true fat girl experience (I’m talking about me, so don’t send me hate mail). . . a food award after working hard hiking up a mountain . . . I can’t think of anything MORE rewarding! A million dollars? Nah, doesn’t get you far these days? A trophy? To gather dust? No thanks. A GIANT Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie?? YES, PLEASE!!
In this video we show you how to bake a giant chocolate chip cookie in the outdoors, although this recipe can be baked in any oven if you feel like staying in the comforts of your home.
