This recipe is taken directly from KOA (Kampgrounds of America), the campground network’s official camping recipes collection — the Dough Boys recipe published on koa.com, submitted by fellow camper Daphne Weaver of Petersburg, VA. It’s one of the simplest campfire desserts around: a roll of biscuit dough, a stick and a fire are basically the whole ingredient list.
Dough boys go by a few names around different campgrounds — twists, doughboys, stick bread — but the technique is the same everywhere: dough gets wrapped around a stick, held near the fire until it sets, then pulled off and filled. KOA’s version keeps it as a sweet, cinnamon-sugar treat, which makes it an easy one to hand to kids at the campsite once you’ve covered the basics of handling a stick safely near an open flame.
Ingredients
- Instant biscuits (from a refrigerated tube or roll)
- Squeezable butter
- Cinnamon
- Sugar
Method
Prepping the Stick
Find a large stick, at least 1 inch in diameter, and cover the end with foil. This gives you a clean, food-safe surface to wrap the dough around instead of bare bark.
Wrapping and Roasting
- Tear a single biscuit off the roll of biscuits.
- Stretch the biscuit over the foil-covered end of the stick.
- Roast the biscuit over the campfire until it’s light brown all over.
- Remove the hardened biscuit from the stick.
- Fill the inside with squeezable butter and sprinkle with a cinnamon and sugar mix.
- Squeeze the biscuit together to seal in the filling.
That’s the entire recipe as KOA publishes it — no exact roasting time is given, because it depends heavily on how close you’re holding the dough to the coals and how hot your fire is running. Rotate the stick slowly and pull it back if the outside is browning faster than the inside is cooking through.
Cooking Safely Around the Fire
Because this recipe means holding food, and often a child’s hands, right next to an open flame for several minutes at a stretch, it’s worth pairing it with the basic fire-safety points from the National Park Service and Smokey Bear before you start. The NPS’s overview of campfire cooking advises keeping a safe distance and using long-handled tools, framing it as staying “close enough to toast marshmallows, not hands.” The same NPS page also recommends looking for cooking tools with insulated handles to avoid burns, and keeping a close eye on children around any campfire.
Smokey Bear’s official campfire safety guide adds a few more points that apply directly here: keep the fire small rather than tall, stay at least 15 feet from tents and other flammable gear when you’re set up near the pit, and never leave the fire unattended while anyone is cooking over it. When you’re done for the night, Smokey Bear’s extinguishing method is drown, stir, drown and feel — pouring water over the coals until the hissing stops, stirring it in with a shovel, and confirming with the back of your hand that nothing is still hot before you walk away.
A Few Practical Notes
Because the dough is hollow once it’s roasted, dough boys work like a pocket — the KOA recipe fills it with butter and cinnamon sugar, but the same shell holds up to other fillings if you want to switch it up, like a spoonful of jam or a few mini marshmallows and chocolate chips. Just keep in mind the filling goes in after the dough comes off the stick and has cooled enough to handle, not before.
If you’re cooking for a group, it helps to stagger who’s roasting at any one time rather than crowding several long sticks around the same small fire — both for the sake of even heat and so everyone has enough room to keep their stick at a safe distance the whole way through.
Keep reading
- Campfire S’mores in a Cone: NPS Recipe and Fire Safety
- NPS Campfire Meals in Foil: Recipe and Safety Notes
- Dutch Oven Camp Biscuits: Lodge’s Recipe Over Coals
- Lazy Peach Cobbler in a Camp Dutch Oven (Lodge Recipe)