Store-Bought Cinnamon Rolls Are The Campfire Dessert We Wish We'd Made Sooner

While it's true that the best parts of camping are sleeping under the stars and getting back to nature, you can't overlook all the tasty camp food. Some of the most memorable meals you'll ever have are shared around a campfire, but it's easy to get stuck in a camp-food rut if you're not careful. While burgers and hotdogs are all-important staples for fireside cooking, try tossing a tube of store-bought cinnamon rolls into the cooler on your next outdoor excursion. With just a cast-iron pan and a campfire, you can have a decadent breakfast ready for happy campers in about 15 minutes.

Store-bought cinnamon rolls can travel well as long as they're kept cold so that the tube doesn't burst, which is easy if you know how to pack a cooler so that it stays cold all day (and night). When the urge for something sweet comes around, the hardest part of the whole process will be getting the fire going. This recipe is so easy we wish we'd known about camping cinnamon rolls a lot sooner!

Let's be honest, the instructions on a tube of store-bought cinnamon rolls are not particularly difficult to follow, but making them over a campfire is arguably even easier than making them at home in the oven. All you need to do is open the tube, place them in a greased cast iron pan, and cook them over the fire, turning them over every two or three minutes to get them golden brown. When they're ready to go, frost them with the icing and they're ready to serve. With that said, however, there are some secrets to camping-cinnamon-roll success.

Try to cook your cinnamon rolls over a fire that's not blazing hot so that the bottom of the pan doesn't burn. Cast iron only needs medium to moderate heat to cook food, because it absorbs and concentrates heat. Your best bet is to make your cinnamon rolls after the fire has burned down a little bit and is looking more like hot coals than big flames. Also, keep an eye on how fast the buns are cooking; you don't want burnt outsides and raw insides. If it seems like the buns are cooking too fast, move them to a cooler area of the fire to slow things down.

Depending on how much gear you want to pack for camping, it's nice to have a lid for your cast iron pan, so consider bringing a Dutch oven along instead of a skillet. A Dutch oven can do all the same things as a skillet, like making eggs and bacon, but you can also use it to heat up soup and sauces and boil water for pasta. When it comes to cinnamon rolls, a lid will keep the heat trapped inside the pan and prevent the tops from drying out, which will help your buns rise and keep them moist. If you can't fit a whole Dutch oven in your camping gear, however, you can get the same effect by covering a skillet of buns with a layer of aluminum foil.

Once you get your first batch of camp cinnamon rolls on the books, they'll probably become a summertime staple. It's sort of easy to believe that a camping menu is limited since the only source of heat is an open fire, but with the right tools, a few hacks and a warm fire, you can have a pretty varied selection, not to mention a sweet and sticky treat at any campout.