Easy Camp Food for Kids

Fun Food Kids Can Make over a Campfire

Here are some great campfire foods that I recently road-tested with my troop of Girl Scouts. Most of these girls were around 12 years old and trained in fire safety which is very important when you have kids cooking over a campfire!

Here are the recipes and instructions for some of our top easy favorites:

Pizza Pockets
Piggies in a Blanket
Thanks-a-lot Smores (a variation of the traditional Smores)
Dough Boys
Brownie Smiles (Monster Mouth)
Jiffy Pop Popcorn
Bannana Boats

Pizza Pockets

Ingredients:

Pita pocket bread
cans of sliced olives (several cans since these are a big hit!)
pizza sauce
grated mozzarella cheese
Various other pizza ingredients such as sliced mushrooms, pepperoni, etc.

Have each camper stuff their pita pocket with their desired pizza ingredients. It’s a good idea to make them two at a time since most will probably eat at least two. Wrap loosely in tin foil and place on a grate over a campfire. Write name on the foil with a sharpie if you have a lot of campers. Foil packets are easy for girls to make for cooking lots of types of food, and if you fold the edges together like a handle, it is EASY to put them on and off the fire without having to get to close — just use a long stick to pick them up! (see photo below)!

Turn occasionally. Once cheese has melted, eat it up! These are very popular since each camper gets to make their own style pizza.

Pita bread, pocket style is sometimes hard to find in the store, but it is usually near the English muffins or even in the deli section of the store.

Piggies in a blanket (great for breakfast or dinner)

Ingredients: Little Smokies sausages & crescent roll dough

Spear several Little Smokies onto your skewer or long stick. Wrap with crescent roll dough. It works best if you do not completely enclose the sausages, or the dough will cook and burn long before the sausages heat. Toast them over the fire and enjoy them as your breakfast.

Thanks-a-lot Smores

Ingredients: marshmallows & Thanks-a-lot Girl Scout cookies

These are not your regular Smores. They are even better! Toast a big marshmallow over the campfire. When it’s good and gooey, put it between two Girl Scout “Thanks A Lot” cookies and devour it. Thanks-A-Lot cookies are a shortbread cookie with a chocolate frosting coating on the backside.

This is a special camp treat that is over and above the traditional graham cracker smores. **Update: Sadly, I have learned that 2020 is the last year for this flavor of Girl Scout Cookie and it is being retired. There will be a new flavor in it’s place in 2021. I am devastated, since this was one of my favorite cookies!

Dough Boys (breakfast)

Ingredients: canned biscuits, sugar, cinnamon

Stretch and wrap several biscuits loosely around the end of a large stick. Roll the dough around on a plate with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon until it is coated.

Toast dough carefully over the fire. Do not cook too quickly or the sugar will burn.

Eat the outside layers as they cook and keep cooking again as you unwrap the inner layers. Gooey and delicious for breakfast. A great way to start the day!

dough boys - campfire food for breakfast

Brownie Smiles (no-cook snack)

Ingredients: apple slices, peanut butter, mini-marshmallows

This is a traditional Girl Scout snack. It goes with the “Brownie Smile” song, and you can’t help but sing it when you finish making one. This requires no cooking, it’s healthy and fun to make.

Just smear a little peanut butter on one side of an apple slice. Add 5 or 6 marshmallows for “teeth” and top it off with another peanut-buttered apple slice.

If you’re kids are not scouts, you can call it a “Monster Mouth”. Say CHEESE!!!

Jiffy Pop Popcorn (snack)

Ingredients: prepackaged Jiffy Pop popcorn (or generic)

It’s sometimes hard to find, but it’s making a comeback in many grocery stores, mostly for camping purposes! I have found it recently at Kroger, and you can also buy this nostalgic and delicious treat by the case on Amazon. (Jiffy Pop on Amazon).

Remove the paper label and heat it over the coals. Shake it carefully and keep it moving while the foil rises, so you don’t burn it.

Use an extender! We duct-taped our handle to a long stick so we could hold it more easily over the coals without burning ourselves. To make this task much easier, there is a Jiffy Pop extension handle sold just for this purpose!

The kids eat this up! I personally feel like to childhood is complete until you’ve made Jiffy Pop over a campfire. This is a SUPER-FUN FOOD!

Campfire Kettle Corn

Instead of the Jiffy Pop option — if you want a way to make campfire popcorn again and again, then get a fire-pit popcorn popper with an extendable handle! All you need is a little oil and a fresh bag of popcorn. Make sure to keep your bag of popcorn sealed tight because the corn kernels do dry out in storage over time and not pop as well.

Let the Kids Cook!

It’s really important in these experiences to let the kids do their own cooking whenever possible. When they feel in control over the experience, they are more likely to want to try new things. Be there as their guide and support, but try to resist the urge to do it for them.

If you have Girl Scouts, then you definitely don’t want to miss my other articles about