Cakewalk

When a task is easy or effortless, it’s sometimes called a “cakewalk.” Suzy was first introduced to the term at her grammar school fair, where she bought a ticket, walked in a circle, music played, a number was called, and someone handed her a cake. She had to carry it home on her bike…but come on, it’s basically a free cake. If that happened every day, life would be a cakewalk, and I would eat a TON of baked goods. Anyway, I digress.

This weekend’s cakewalk was a bit more involved–a six mile hike, two frybakes, 34 pieces of charcoal, a snake, and a windstorm—but it was worth it. We’d never made cheesecake or lasagna in the backcountry before, so we decided to do both while enjoying the brilliant fall colors. Our trail of choice was Racer Camp Hollow, near Great North Mountain on the Virginia-West Virginia line.

As for the meal, we assembled the ingredients ahead of time and froze them in ziplock bags. We also carried charcoal, a spatula, and two extra plastic containers for mixing bowls. Lastly, we carried a foil pie tin, which weighed next to nothing and worked well for keeping things warm by the fire.

At the parking lot, we ran into a big group from the Georgetown University Outdoor Club, which hit the trail just ahead of us. We appreciated sharing the trail with the next generation, even if that was a little competition for campsites. As we were musing about how much fun it was to see college kids excited about backpacking, I stumbled on a snake right in the middle of trail.

Once I came back to earth– and Suzy stopped laughing–I realized it was fake, left by one of the Georgetown kids to entertain fellow club members. I’m relieved to know that higher education is still paying dividends in this country, and that camping pranks have elevated beyond sneaking rocks (or beer) into a friend’s backpack. We thanked the outing club for the laugh when we passed their camp later. (Oh, and a belated thanks to KB for that backcountry beer in like 1995.)

By late afternoon, we’d found a nice camp well up the trail, set up our tent, collected some wood, and turned our attention to dinner. Souzz took the lasagna, and I took the cake (so to speak). For the lasagna, we used no-bake noodles, sauce, ricotta/spinach/eggs, sausage, and mozzarella. We carried the eggs pre-scrambled in a small plastic Nalgene bottle and added that in to the ricotta mixture at the last minute. Most of the rest was pre-mixed.

Prep was actually pretty easy, about 15 minutes, and the cooking took about an hour and fifteen minutes (18 coals split top/bottom). It’s trite to say it was worth the wait, but it’s also true.  We enjoyed a nice fire, garlic bread, and a few appetizers while we waited. I’d give this dish a full five sporks on the Souzzchef rating scale.

Cheesecake prep was similarly easy, maybe 15 minutes. We used a package of graham crackers and third of a cup of butter for the crust, and 12 ounces of sour cream, eight ounces of cream cheese, two eggs, a half cup of sugar, a dash of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla, and a half teaspoon of almond extract for the filling.  For the crust, we melted the butter over the stove and stirred in the crushed crackers. We assembled the filling, poured it in, and baked for about an hour and 20 minutes (eight coals on top, eight coals on bottom, adding some coals from the fire at the very end). For this dish, we used a “deep alpine” frybake (3 inches deep, a prototype not yet for sale but likely to be on the market soon).

A wind break would have helped, as cook time was slowed down by a light breeze, but that at least helped cool the cake afterwards. We added cherry topping and we had ourselves a nice fall treat.

The only thing we’d change is to avoid freezing the sour cream ahead of time, as it lost its consistency during the freeze/thaw.  As a result, the texture wasn’t even…so I’m only rating it four out of five sporks. Next time maybe we’ll just wrap the sour cream with the other frozen ingredients.  Still, the cake came out just fine.

It was a calm night as we headed to bed, but we still buttoned things up a bit.  Some years back, I took a mountaineering course and was told that I was sloppy with my gear–that one day something important was going to get blown away or covered in snow.  So my custom now is to pack camp tight before heading to bed, with everything bolted down in case of a surprise storm, an aggressive raccoon, or both (and I would totally post photos if a raccoon ransacked camp in the middle of a storm, as that would be kind of cool).

Lo and behold, the wind picked up in the middle of the night, and several times we were woken up by 35 mph gusts. So many leaves were hitting the tent that I actually thought it was raining. We emerged in the morning to see that the wind had stripped the trees quite a bit, and we had seemingly gone from fall to winter in a single night.  Two hikers that passed us in the morning shared stories of holding onto their tent fly with both hands, exciting stuff. 

In the morning, we made coffee and a nice breakfast and marveled at how different things looked with so many of the leaves gone.  The weekend wasn’t easy or effortless, but it was definitely a memorable trip.  And then Suzy handed me a piece of leftover cheesecake. Did someone say cakewalk?