Dessert night

Our last meal was a huge success, but we had to eat it in shifts, since you can realistically only deep fry one thing at a time. This time, I decided my friends and I should eat a light, balanced dinner, but save room for dessert and go crazy there.

In preparation, I bought: Twinkies, fun size Milky Way bars, Cadbury Caramel Eggs, chocolate covered cherries, cookie dough, and Oreos (Doublestuffed, obviously). I also got powdered sugar and fudge topping to put on our desserts. Sorry to say we didn't get to all of these in one night, but don't worry, they'll all be covered in due time.

I printed out recipes for each, and all four had different batter recipes. We decided to start with Twinkies. I'd tried a deep fried Twinkie in Vegas years ago, and I liked it, but I don't remember it being truly incredible. Anyways, I went with this recipe.

You have to chill the Twinkies (and other stuff) for a while before cooking, so I had put the Twinkies in the freezer, and the other stuff in the fridge overnight.

The batter was 1 cup milk, 2 tbsp. vinegar, 1 tbsp. vegetable oil, 1 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and a dash of salt. make that into a smooth, blended mixture, as seen below (Hey, we have pictures now!)

Then, put a popsicle stick into the twinkie and dip it in the batter. Since I only had wider sticks, those caused some of the Twinkies to break a little bit. That was more of a minor annoyance than a problem, but still worth mentioning. Having the popsicle sticks really helps you get the whole Twinkie fulled covered in batter. It'll start coming off on your fingers if you have to hold them in your hands -- which is tasty, but a little messy and it means the Twinkie won't be totally covered

Once you have totally covered the Twinkie, carefully dip it into oil heated to 375 (I'm still new to this, but it looks like pretty much everything needs 375, which is the max on my fryer.).

These float also, so keep them rotating in the oil. I could only really fit one at a time, but later I cooked some without the sticks, and then I could fit two.

After three to four minutes, these were a beautiful golden brown. In Vegas, I think I pretty much covered mine in sugar, chocolate, sprinkles, etc., but here I didn't want to overdo it. I went with a light dusting of powdered sugar to enhance, but not overpower the Twinkie flavor.

These were incredible! Everyone loved them! they were crispy on the outside, but soft and gooey on the inside, with the creamy center warmed perfectly. We each had one, which, it turns out, is a decent sized dessert.

Below is a pretty awesome cross-section.

The recipe I linked to above also includes a berry sauce to put on the Twinkies. It sounded good, but that will have to wait for another day.

Even though we were kind of full, and very satisfied, we pressed on. Though the Milky Way recipe called for a slightly different batter, we just went ahead and dipped them into the leftover Twinkie batter. Ditto for the Cadbury Caramel Egg (They were out of Cadbury Creme Eggs, but that was ok because I like the caramel ones more.) and the chocolate covered cherry. I'm a bit lazy, but, hey, if the Twinkie batter is wrong, I don't want to be right.

The Milky way bars were really good. They came out of fryer after a couple minutes oozing caramel, as did the Cadbury Egg. Sorry to say I don't have pictures of these. One time a Milky Way bar totally fell out of the batter shell, and I had to fish it out and re-batter it. It still turned out fine. The cadbury egg was excellent too. The chocolate gets really soft and the caramel inside is amazing. My hand was literally shaking as I ate these. Maybe that's a reflection of how much sugar I had just consumed, but I think it was the pure joy I felt from the entire experience.

The only blemish on the night was the chocolate covered cherry. I guess the whole thing wasn't cold enough, and the cherry fell out of the chocolate and hardened from the hot oil. and the remaining chocolate-batter mess wasn't that good. But, after 2 nights, the deep fryer is 6 for 7 overall, and I'll do some research and figure out how I can successfully make a deep fried chocolate covered cherry.

I still have a few more upcoming posts of stuff I've already cooked that don't have pictures. Sorry about that! I will, however, start carefully documenting everything for all future deep-frying.

Up next: Oreos