Deep Fried Sweets

A few months ago i was sitting in the waiting room of my doctors office flipping through a back issue of national geographic when i came across an article on the State Fairs of the Midwest. With activities such as the annual Corn Dog Chomp where the Iowa state fair gathers 8400 participants to bite into a corn dog (fried in bacon fat btw) at the same time, State fairs don't just encourage American fatassery they celebrate it. God bless 'em.
Deep fried foods are the true delicacy of the fair circuit. They will dip anything in oil; pickles, cheese curds, cheeseburgers, veggies (which I've had and are delicious!). Amazing. But none so amazing as deep fried sweets of which I've heard rumors, but never had the pleasure of sampling. Ms. Amanda came up to visit me earlier this month and together we decided to give it a shot.

We decided to narrow our experiments down to the oddest yet most common of the deep fried sweets.


*Oreos
*Twinkies
*Snickers
*Cheesecake
*Coca Cola

We made a thick sweet batter of mix of powdered sugar, flour, water and pancake mix. Measuring smeasuring.




First the Oreos, I had about three glasses of wine at this point and Amanda took over the actual work (as seen in pic above) and i did what i do best; drink, bark out orders, and snap photos. She coated the cookies with the batter and dropped them in the oil. Now if I were smart...and sober i would have thought to myself. "Wow, the oil is smoking perhaps we should turn the heat down a bit" But alas no. We dropped the first cookie in there and nearly ignited a house fire. By the end of the pack we were deep frying oreo champs, and let me tell you. They were a thing of beauty. Warm, gooey, yet still firm enough to handle. By far better then any oreo or any other cookie i have ever eaten. Amanda loved them, and Dave and Adam weren't complaining either.

Next up? Twinkies. We all hate Twinkies, in fact i don't think i have ever met anyone who has ever liked Twinkies. They're much too sweet, dense, and you always feel a bit guilty, sick, and irritated after eating one. I was going to nix the idea all together, but we just saw Zombieland, and considering they don't contain not one natural ingredient, it's probably the easiest and safest 'food' to deep fry. So once again we coated and dropped it in. Oh. My. God. Amazing. Possibly the best thing I've had the pleasure of putting in my mouth.


Even Amanda's boyfriend Adam enjoyed it and he's a chef. Who, side note, is lovely and by far my favorite of Amanda's boyfriends. It's no secret that I've never cared much for the men in Amanda's life (although her taste in women is impeccable :p ) but Adam's top notch. Plus he's a dead ringer for Jeremy Miller (Yeah I said it. If your reading this, sorry buddy, but I've watched enough Growing Pains as a kid to spot Ben Seaver when i see him.)



So by now the bottle of wine is nearly empty, and we're getting drunker and cockier by the minute. and like most people who let their cockiness get the best of them, it was downhill from there on out. Case in point Snickers. Dropped it into the oil and it melted. Frickin melted. The chocolate almost completely came off the bar and the peanuts kind of came half way out of nougat. It wasn't bad. Just not good. Like eating a candy bar that was sitting out in the sun.


Cheesecake? disaster. Honestly the worst thing i've ever eaten. It was just oily. Warm oily cheesecake. I think it turned Dave, who's a cheesecake nut, off the stuff forever. l

Last up was Coca Cola. No frickin clue how to deep fry Coca Cola. Do you soak it in cake then deep fry it? You don't just pour the Coke into the oil...cause after a few drinks I seriously considered doing this, thank god sober minds steered me towards a less dangerous idea. We turned to Ben---I mean Adam, who has cooking experience. Ultimately we decided to fry it as you would a funnel cake. Flour, pancake mix, eggs, sugar, a crap load of Coke, um....other stuff and tried it out. Again nasty. It just kind of dissipated in the oil and burnt on the outside yet remained raw on the inside. The taste? watery coke. Not exactly what I had in mind. I could see how this would be delicious if done by competent chefs. We are not competent chefs.


Well at the end of the day, I packed on an extra 2 pounds, the house smelled like a fairground for a week, had a wicked hangover, and my already bad skin looked like that of a 16 year old fry cook, but I got to see Amanda, we had a blast. So all in all? Great way to spend a few hours. Y'all should try it....