Food of the Gods 2 : Deep Fried Decadence

Twinkies…again?!

In Food of the Gods I selflessly subjected myself to the decadent “delight” which is the Twinkie.

Now it’s time to return to the world of Twinkies, but this time we’re going to deep fry them!

This moment was prophesied at the end of Food of the Gods, but it has taken several years to build up to this point.

Of course, this was not helped by Hostess, the makers of Twinkies, filing for bankruptcy, but the company was saved so that Twinkies would remain on the shelves.

As the packet now shouts out:

“The Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever.”



In another lucky twist, our local supermarket started stocking American goods including, you guessed it, Twinkies!

A bottle of oil, some chop sticks, and some chocolate syrup, we were good to go.

A box of Twinkies and a pan of boiling oil….what could possibly go wrong?

The Twinkie Fry Up

Bear in mind that we had never actually deep fried anything, this was going to be a learning experience.

Now, if you don’t know anything where do you turn? Yes, we looked it up on the web.

We found numerous YouTube videos explaining how to deep fry these Golden Sponge Cakes – clearly we were not alone in our endeavour.

It seemed pretty simple…

Step 1 – Frozen Twinkies

Put your Twinkies in the freezer.

Step 2 – Batter

We found various recipes for batter, all strangely (or perhaps not) including white vinegar, not something we are familiar with for making batter.

Step 3 – Boiling Oil

A bit obvious but still…

We chose a smallish saucepan to reduce the amount of oil we needed. This would mean frying only one Twinkie at a time, but that would not be a problem.

Step 4 – Fry Them Suckers!

That’s right. Engulf the Twinkies in batter and throw them into the boiling oil until they look cooked.

We tried skewering them with chop sticks to start with…




…but then we just let them float free.


Watch and learn….

But I be done seen about everything,When I see a Twinkie fry.

Et Voilà!

When the moment screams decadence, you’ve got to reach for the whipped cream and chocolate syrup.



Oh yes!

“It’s Tasty”

What can I say, they were really nice (yes, I had more than one).

All in all we’re marking this whole experience down as a roaring success.

In fact, we have now got our sights set on deep frying ice cream and cream eggs.

Watch this space!

“Food of the Gods”

Twinkies!

A word that strikes fear into the heart, or arteries, of any sane man (women seem far too sensible to even consider them).

As usual I am sacrificing myself to get the facts so that other people don’t have to put themselves in harms way. Selfless, I know.

This time I ordered some Twinkies.

There were at least two places I found here in the UK:

The Stateside Candy Co.  (where I ordered mine from)
American Soda

It was a box of ten.

 

Why Oh Why!

To most people (I assume) in North America the Twinkie is a well known item of cakey confectionary but to us people here in the British Isles they are a tempting mystery….until now.

In their own words the makers of Twinkies describe them as:

"Golden Sponge Cake with Creamy Filling"


But more about that later…

Although aware of them through US TV and movies (Die Hard, Ghost Busters), Twinkies did not fully engage my attention until I saw the episode of The Pretender titled Hazards. In this episode Jarod passes a truck delivering cakey items and on seeing the man with a trolley of Twinkies asks if he can buy one off him for $20, The delivery man of course accepts. Jarod’s first impression?

“It’s tasty”.


Who can ignore such a recommendation?

Next we see Horace Strickland who upon seeing Jarod with a box full of Twinkies exclaims “Food of the Gods”, but then of course he was the evil doer of the episode, finally getting his comeuppance in a hazardous container full of Twinkie cream (Jarod emptied out how many Twinkies?!).

Throughout the episode Jarod consumes a colossal number of Twinkies on his quest to right this episode’s wrong and all, I might add, without seeming to put on an ounce of weight or exhibit any signs of nausea.

Back to business….

Here we have the Twinkie itself, the individually wrapped package of sugary sweet gooiness (modelled by my beautiful, but shy, assistant).



Now for the gooey bit…

The Twinkie Tear Down!

The first thing to note is that they were not wrong. Slice ‘em up and there is the creamy filling. Not quite as creamy as the box led me to believe but I guess that is to be expected.



But what about the scientific bit, the facts and figures?

I was a little surprised that there were so few calories in a Twinkie. They are always bigged up as being so evil, and ok, with big fat zeros for Vitamins A, C and Calcium they are not winning any prizes for nutritional value, but is 150 calories really a lot? But there is the small matter of the sugar and the fat… Better than me jabbering on, I found this random article on Twinkie nutrition (not responsible for facts blah blah blah). http://www.livestrong.com/article/310643-twinkies-nutrition/ One heart stopping claim they make is that the infamous Fried Twinkie weighs in at 420 calories!

So what were they like? Did they live up to my expectations?

I have to say I was a little disappointed. I had expected sweetness, decadence and the morishness that comes with “evil” cakes. What I got was a mediocre experience.

They were stodgy and believe it or not I did not find them sweet enough.

Of course, I only had a box of ten, clearly not enough to perform a full study, and there is after all the Fried Twinkie to test drive.

The story is far from over!

And so we bid not adieu, but au revoir to the Twinkie.