A banana boat is a dessert which is designed to be made while camping. Many generations of campers have developed their own unique takes on the banana boat; the earliest published recipes for this dessert appear in Girl Scout guides. As you might imagine, the centerpiece of the dessert is a banana, topped with an assortment of ingredients of choice and then roasted in the fire to warm the banana through and turn the dessert into a rich, gooey mass.

To make a banana boat, campers take a whole banana and split it partway down the middle, creating a slit. The slit is stuffed with things like chocolate chips, marshmallows, peanut butter, caramel sauce, and so forth, and then the banana, with the peel left on, is wrapped in foil. The foil-wrapped banana is then roasted in the coals of the fire for five to 10 minutes, until the peel starts to blacken, and then it can be eaten, after being allowed to briefly cool.

Like s'mores, another popular camping treat, the banana boat is a very flexible food, and people can customize their own with ingredients they like, ranging from peppermint patties to nuts. Some people prefer to stick with the classic flavor pairing of chocolate and banana, leaving additional ingredients to more adventurous cooks. Banana boats can also get a bit messy, as the softened heated ingredients tend to get rather runny, but that may be part of the fun for some campers.

Because the production of a banana boat involves contact with the fire, it is a good idea to have adults supervise younger campers. The dessert can get quite hot, and the ingredients may spurt when the banana is opened, so caution should be used when pulling the banana out of the fire. Adults can also help very young campers make slits in their bananas, and they may want to offer advice about ingredient pairings; peppermint patties and peanut butter, for example, may not go so well together.

If you plan to make banana boats on a camping trip, you should pack bananas and the assorted toppings along with foil, obviously, along with a set of tongs for moving the bananas around in the fire. Alternatively, you could pack a corn grilling basket, which will hold the bananas in place while they roast; the basket can also be used for its original intended purpose, making it a multifunctional piece of camping equipment. Since banana boats can get messy, you may want to pack moistened dishcloths in plastic bags, which can be used as wet wipes for sticky fingers.