First, you mix up
your cake batter/bread dough and put it into a greased pot that is small enough
to fit completely into a larger pot which has a lid.
Fill the large pot
about 1/4 or 1/3 of the way with water and put some spoons or canning jar rings
at the bottom of the pot to keep your cake from touching the bottom of the larger pot which is directly on the heating
element. Place the smaller pot with the
cake batter in it inside the large pot.
At this point, it should actually be floating on the water.
Put the lid on the
large (outer) pot and if it doesn't seal very well, you can use aluminum foil
to keep too much steam from escaping from around the edges.
Then, put the whole thing onto your stovetop/campfire/charcoal stove and bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, start timing and bake the cake for about the same amount of time as the recipe calls for it to be baked in an oven. The thinner the cake is going to be, the shorter the time required for it to bake. And as long as you don't boil all of the water off, it is impossible to burn your cake. So if you keep it in "too long" it will not be a problem.
Once you have
reached the proper time, whip the lid off of the large pot so the condensation
doesn't all drip onto your cake, and check it with a toothpick to see if it is
done in the middle. If it isn't, just
re-cover it and keep on boiling the water.
The end result is a very moist cake or bread (so don't expect crispy crust if you make a loaf of bread or cinnamon rolls or fruit crisp - see photos below), but it will certainly be done and it still tastes good!
You can learn more about oven-less baking from a post I did in 2009 here.
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