Baking in a Bake Kettle on an Open Hearth

You can bake a cake on a campfire or an open hearth; all you need is a bake kettle. (I understand you can get modern versions at camping supply stores). Yesterday at Fort York, my pal Gillian made a gingerbread cake to be baked in a fancy bundt pan inside the bake kettle in the Officer's Mess kitchen. Here is a picture of it in action.

The kettle sits on a trivet over a bed of hot coals. No logs should be used, as they smoke too much. The item to be baked is placed inside, and then the lid is fitted snugly over the top. More coals are shovelled into the pan attached to the lid.

One tricky thing about the baking kettle is that you can't take the lid off to check for doneness, because that releases all the heat. Instead, you must rely on what your nose tells you: when you smell cake that's baked but not burnt, you take it out. It took about an hour to bake the gingerbread.