Cavewoman Cream Puffs

A campfire assembly rather than a true choux pastry: dough wound on a stick, baked over coals, then split and filled. Everything hinges on the biscuit being hollow enough to hold filling and on the milk actually whipping.

• Whipping evaporated milkEvaporated milk whips only when very cold — chill the unopened can in ice water or a cooler until near freezing, and chill the bowl and beaters too. It holds volume for maybe half an hour, so whip it just before serving; a teaspoon of lemon juice per cup helps it stand.
• SweeteningEvaporated milk is unsweetened, unlike condensed. Figure two to three tablespoons of sugar per cup of milk, added after soft peaks form, plus vanilla if you have it.
• The stickUse a green hardwood branch about an inch thick, bark peeled from the working end, or a length of clean dowel. Avoid pine, cedar and any unidentified shrub. Greasing the stick and warming it in the fire before winding on the dough helps the inside cook through and makes the baked tube easier to slide off.
• Cook over coals, not flameWind the dough in a loose spiral with gaps between turns, and hold it over glowing coals, turning constantly. Flame chars the outside in a minute while the inside stays raw. Twenty minutes at a comfortable hand's distance is closer to right than five minutes up close.
• Guava pasteSold as goiabada or pasta de guayaba in Latin American groceries, usually in a block or tin. It is stiff; slice it thin and let the warm biscuit soften it, or mash it with a spoonful of hot water first.
• Fill warm, eat at onceSlide the biscuit off the stick, split it while still warm, and fill. Whipped evaporated milk weeps quickly, and a filled biscuit will not keep even an hour.
• YieldThe source recipe is not reproduced here, so quantities are guesswork: a biscuit dough made with about two cups of flour should wrap roughly five or six sticks, and one can of evaporated milk whipped up will go about that far.