The air is getting crisp and the leaves are falling. What a perfect time for a bonfire! Sometimes it’s so nice to have your friends and family huddled around a toasty fire on a cool evening, roasting marshmallows and singing songs together.
Songs To Sing Along
If you need some suggestions for younger kids who haven’t been introduced to the whole bonfire experience yet, here are a few of our favorite songs we put together to be printed out and passed around.
Delicious Bonfire-Food
One of the best parts of a bonfire is the food! Of course you traditionally roast marshmallow’s over the fire but here are a few variations and other ideas to spice up the night.
Mountain Pies
One of my favorite campfire experiences was when a friend introduced me to mountain pies otherwise known as hobo pies. You can pretty much take anything from the fridge including, bread, jam, tomato sauce, cheese, meats, fruit, berries etc. and put them in this iron cooking device over the flame. The results are almost guaranteed to be delicious!
Marshmallows Creations:
1. Put the chocolate and marshmallow’s in a banana and heat it in tin foil.
2. Use chocolate chip cookies instead of graham crackers.
3. Replace the crackers with shortcake and add strawberries.
4. Add peanut butter too really make everything stick together.
Stick Bread:
All you need for stick bread dough:
- 300 g flour
- 1 packet of baking powder
- 150 g lowfat quark
- 6 tb oil
- 6 tb milk
- 1 pinch of sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- wood sticks
For the stick bread dough, put the quark, the oil, milk and sugar in a bowl and stir until smooth with the whisk of the hand mixer.
Mix flour, baking powder and salt and add to the quark mixture. Knead all ingredients with the kneading hooks of the hand mixer to a smooth dough.
Knead the dough with floured hands on the flour-dusted surface. Then divide into 6 equally sized pieces. Make a roll of about 40 cm from each piece of dough.
Wrap the rolling pin spirally around a pointed stick end and lightly squeeze it at the end, so that the stick bread can not slip off the stick when grilling.
Put the sticks on the bonfire. Grill the bread for 20-30 minutes, turning it more often to make it brown and cook evenly. Pay close attention to the bread – it burns fast!
Safety First!
If you’re building your bonfire in the ground, make sure it’s not too close to houses or trees and dig a hole that is about 2 feet bigger than you want your fire to be. Make the fire small at fire and only use dry material to feed the flame. Make sure you talk to your kids beforehand about fire danger and not messing around. Have water on hand, just in case. And always be sure to keep your kids supervised around an open flame.
Alternatives
If your kids are still too young to appreciate the real deal or it is too cold outside, here are a few indoor flames for inspiration.
Stay warm and enjoy! 🙂