DEEP FRIED COOKIE DOUGH WITH RAINBOW SPRINKLES. THE BEST FOOD EVER. SERIOUSLY.

I went to visit friends in Washington DC recently. I enjoyed a nice long weekend of museums, low-quality baseball (in a very nice ballpark, I might add), and jumbo slice (It’s SO big! This isn't me; it's just a random online picture.). One of those friends I was visiting was Ashley, who co-authored a recent post with me. When Ashley's sister, Brittany, found out I was coming to DC to visit, she decided we should deep fry something. She got together all the supplies for us, but, unfortunately, wasn't able to get a deep fryer for the occasion. Brittany was determined to make it work, though, and, as I always encourage that kind of deep-frying enthusiasm, we decided to make do with oil in a pot, just like in pioneer days.

Ashley: Did you know Bobby died of diphtheria while deep frying and trying to ford the river?

Bobby: I even brought them a deep-frying thermometer as a gift. I thought this might come in handy, because when I used to deep fry fish in a deep pan, the oil always got too hot and my kitchen got really smoky. In fact, I set off the fire alarm in college once while deep frying fish.
We spent a while discussing what to deep fry over drinks (Ashley turned 10,000 days old that day). We settled on calzones for dinner, and then cookie dough for dessert.

The calzones were way bigger than I expected, and the pot we had wasn't all that big. Since I was worried they might not cook all the way through given their size, we microwaved the calzones first to bring them close to done, and then covered them in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs.

The calzone took up most of the room in the pot, and it started bubbling wildly. This was actually a legitimately unsafe situation. A lot of oil spilled over and landed all over the stove. If it was a gas stove we almost certainly would have started a fire. Also, despite procuring a deep-frying thermometer and trying my best to actually use it, the oil got way too hot again. We were aiming for about 375F, and it was probably closer to 450F. As usually happens when I deep fry without a deep fryer, the calzone got very black very quickly. This isn't all bad news though. When I have fried fish in a pan, they turn very black, but they still taste great on the inside. So, we kept it in for a few minutes, and then took it out and divvied it up.
Ashley: I should note here, that that pan will never be the same. But it was also one gazillion percent worth it. Also, I'm not sure we had baking soda in the house, so it would have been a legitimately scary situation had we started a grease fire. Luckily, we didn't. We didn't even set off the smoke detector. Though, our house did smell like deep frying for like 3 days.

Bobby: The calzone was delicious, as you would expect one to be. And the overcooked breadcrumbs didn't harm the calzone too much. For the second calzone, the oil was still too hot, there was a lot more smoke, and this one was even blacker on the outside, and the very edges were a little too burned. The inside did still taste fine though.

We shut off the heat to the oil to clear the smoke a little and prepare dessert. We ran out of eggs and had to go make a run to the store to get some. While Ashley was off doing that, Brittany made small balls of chocolate chip cookie dough and put them in the freezer for a little bit. Ashley came back with eggs, and also Reese's cups and a jar of sprinkles. We also had some crumbled up Oreos. The sprinkles were a very inspired idea. Ashley says she got the idea from Funfetti cake.
Ashley: I feel I should slightly correct the record here. I stock rainbow sprinkles in my pantry because you never know when you will need them. I believe I mentioned this in my last guest post, but I used to eat rainbow sprinkles out of the tub with a spoon. In my mind, they are the sweet version of garlic. You can add them to anything sweet and it is better. Sadly, Chips Ahoy has forgotten this lesson and they stopped making Chips Ahoy with sprinkles. It's as sad as when Trix shifted from the ball shape to the clearly inferior fruit shapes.

Bobby: I'm glad you think that about Trix too! At one point when I was younger Trix was one of my favorite cereals. Once they switched to the fruit shapes, I was basically done with them though.

We dipped the cookie dough in the batter, and then rolled that in the sprinkles and then dropped them in the oil which we were able to properly heat to 375F this time. They floated, and they only took a couple minutes.

These were INCREDIBLE!!! The cookie dough was almost a liquid, inside the coating, and the sprinkles on the outside not only added a beautiful rainbow of color, but a lot of sugar. It's tough to describe, but eating it just made me so happy. These weren't tastes like sweet, sour, salty, bitter, that you learn in school. The tastes here were more like magic, joy, candy, and pleasure.

Ashley: I'm not sure Bobby is doing this justice. When I bit into this thing, I knew it was quite possibly the best taste I had ever experienced. On the outside, you had this sugary candy shell of melted rainbow sprinkles plus pancake batter. But on the inside, you had moist gooey delicious cookie dough. It was like if you could take a fresh baked hot chocolate chip cookie and wrap it in candy. It was amazing. I would have eaten a 100 of them if I could have. Also, I'm not even kidding, I think I actually saw tears of joy in Bobby's eyes when he tasted this thing. These things are so good, I'm fairly convinced Bobby and I should go to the Texas State Fair and try to win their deep frying contest with them. Bobby: Yea, I realize I'm not doing it justice, but I really think that is because the English language doesn't actually have adequate words to describe just how good these were. I thought they were tears of joy too, but those more cynical than me might say the smoke in the room contributed to my tears.

Ashley: Bobby is right. There are no words. I think he is close though when he says the tastes were magic, joy, and candy. But, I'll take his pleasure and kick it right up to euphoria. Also, even though we literally had to take a walk around the block to escape the smoke for awhile, I know those were tears of joy.

Ashley’s roommate, Karen, added this, "Perfect. I just feel like I can never express in words how absolutely, amazingly delicious the fried chocolate chip cookie dough + sprinkles was. It was so far beyond words. When can we do it again?"

We also tried the cookie dough in batter rolled in the Oreo pieces, and that was objectively really good, but it paled in comparison to the sprinkles. We also battered and deep fried a couple of Reese's Cups. I like the chocolate underneath the batter, but the peanut butter never really softens up and gets gooey like I always think it should. This also happened to the Reese's Peanut Butter egg I tried at Easter and one I had at Wildwood, NJ (a future post), so it's not just the way I prepare them. Anyways, these are still really good. Below, I put a few sprinkles on one of them, and none on the other.
A few weeks later, I was visiting family, and my mom asked what kind of cake she should make. I never pick Funfetti, but I had to this time, because of the fresh memory of such a wonderful sprinkle experience.

Ashley: I am so happy to hear you are on the Funfetti train. In case anyone wants my special Funfetti tips, here they are:

1) If you dump more rainbow sprinkles into the batter, you will have extra Funfetti.

2) Get the strawberry icing in the tub. It's just the right thing to do. Believe me.

3) Top the strawberry icing with a few more rainbow sprinkles.

4) Have awesome times.

By the way, I know Cake Batter ice cream is delicious, in fact, it is one of my favorite new flavors, and you can go ahead and have Funfetti batter ice cream by simply ordering the cake batter and some rainbow sprinkles on top. Then, I recommend mixing it all together like a five-year old so the sprinkles are evenly distributed. Again, you will thank me for this tip.

Bobby: Wow, you take sprinkles very seriously. Actually, there are some good lessons to be learned there. I bet there a lot of good deep fried desserts that I'd love putting icing and sprinkles on top of. And also, the ability to roll the batter in sprinkles opens up and entire new world of possibilities that I feel I need to explore.

Ashley: I also have breaking Funfetti news. I recently discovered there is also a mix for Funfetti cookies. Just take a minute with that. It means that you could make Funfetti cookie dough, wrap it in pancake batter, wrap that in sprinkles, and then deep fry it. I just blew your mind didn't I?
I blew my own mind. Every time I ponder this (believe me, I've thought about it at least 20 times), I don't even know what to do. On the one hand, I feel like I need to try it immediately. On the other hand, I fear it could never live up to the chocolate chip cookie dough or the hype I've created for it in my mind. It's a real conundrum.

Bobby: Well, I was hoping that the excitement and the delicious results would make you a regular deep fryer, but watching your reaction to cleaning up the oil doesn't give me high hopes for that.

Ashley: I'll be honest, there is one major barrier to me becoming a regular deep fryer. I am an absolute terror in the kitchen and for me "cooking" means mac and cheese, a frozen pizza, or anything that can be prepared in 15 minutes or less using a microwave or toaster oven. You take away the microwave or toaster oven and it gets highly likely that I will burn or scramble whatever I am "cooking." For example, at about this time three years ago, I decided I absolutely had to have apple cider donuts because it was fall. Since you can't buy apple cider donuts in Washington, DC, I did what any reasonable person would do; I decided to make them myself. My mom used to make these delicious churros for Spanish class parties in high school, and that looked easy enough – throw dough in oil then eat delicious food product. HUGE mistake.

First off, I don't know how to cook. Second of all, I was trying to make donuts using the pan method as described above while having no clue about oil temperature or whatever is required to make this work. Third, for whatever reason my dough did not believe in taking your standard donut shape. So I abandoned that and thought, "Hey, I'll throw in these balls of dough in the oil and they will be like munchkins." In the end, my balls of dough were different sizes and they didn't exactly retain their ball shape. As a result, my apple cider munchkins were basically unevenly cooked blobs of dough. They looked so bad that one of my co-workers saw them and asked me if I made fried chicken.

So, in the end, I think we learned from this experience that deep frying has great power, but it comes with great responsibility. If you do it right you get the pure ecstasy of deep fried cookie dough. But if you do it wrong, you'll probably start a grease fire and end up with donuts that look like fried chicken. That's why I leave all of my frying needs to professionals like Bobby.