I made brownies in a box!

Okay, so I just helped. But, I did make the box oven and the brownies. Okay, the brownies were from a mix, but I added the peanut butter chips!

I am the group leader for the Prep Rally Enrichment group in our ward. We do preparedness topics in this group, and this month the topic was Cooking Without Power. Since I have a good in (what dad can resist when their daughter asks them to teach?) I volunteered to coordinate. Dad came over and came up with a great outline for the class, involving cooking using four different methods of powerless cooking. One was baking using a box oven. Never heard of it? This is what it looks like:

Basically, you cover the inside of a cardboard box with aluminum foil, shiny side out, making sure there is no uncovered cardboard. I am a little paranoid, so I did several layers just to be sure I got it all. Then, I taped the whole thing around the outside with duct tape. Viola - a box oven. And, you can bake anything in a box oven that you can in regular oven. To bake, put a layer of aluminum foil on the ground (the aluminum keeps the ground from starting fire or absorbing heat and reflects heat back into the oven), add charcoals around your pan to equal your desired cooking temperature (one briquette produces 40degrees of heat), rest your pan on a couple of rocks, bricks or other stable objects, and put your box over the top. Make sure to rest your box on a couple of sticks about 1" high so you get ventilation all the way around, the charcoals will go out without the air for fuel. Then, you just let your oven sit for your normal recipe time, and you are done. I know, pretty amazing. We did brownies, and I never can get those puppies done just right. I think these were better than most I do in the oven. It was really cool. I think that I am going to have to invest in a cast-iron dutch oven and do a powerless dinner once every two or three weeks, just so that, should the need arise, I could do it. Plus, it is just fun!