Mars Bar

After deep frying some fish one day recently, I prepared a Mars Bar for dessert. I had never actually had a Mars Bar before. I also thought they didn't even sell them in the US, but a friend and coworker found one randomly in a convenience store in Harvard Sq. and he thought I might like to deep fry it. And he was absolutely correct; I did want to deep fry it.

I have no idea how it got to Boston, because the wrapper was obviously foreign. You can't really read this, but you probably can tell it's a different nutrition information label:

There is also another language on here, further suggesting this particular candy bar was far from home. I had thought a Mars Bar was basically the exact same as a Milky Way Bar, but then I looked up its Wikipedia page and found out that it is a little different and that Mars Bars are, in fact, not sold in the US.

Deep frying it was pretty straightforward but notable in that it was my first full-size candy bar. Also, in Scotland, I had heard deep-fried Mars Bars was a relatively common thing, so I was happy to have tried that. This Wikipedia article suggests it was never that common a practice, but I am, nonetheless, still glad I've tried it. (You my have noticed that Wikipedia is my primary source of information in the world.) I used buttermilk pancake mix, as usual, and deep fried it until golden brown. It was delicious as are all the candy bars I've done, and very sweet. There was a ton of caramel, which I love, and the chocolate actually tasted sweeter than a Milky Way.All my pictures from this day seem a little blurry, but I think you can still see how delicious this looks. Perhaps my blood sugar had gotten too high and I couldn't hold a camera still.

After frying the Mars Bar, I had some extra batter, and I didn't want it to go to waste. So, I dropped the rest of the batter into the deep fryer, figuring these would be like beignets, the New Orleans breakfast treat. Or at least like a sweeter hush puppy.

You can see it got a kind of weird shape to it. I need to keep practicing dropping dough, corn meal, or whatever into the fryer, because after a few attempts at hush puppies, I am usually able to make nice, round ones. This was OK, but not great. I realized afterwards that I probably should have put maple syrup on it, since it's basically just a oddly shaped three-dimensional pancake. I'll try this again for breakfast sometime, and also I'll try cooking up some breakfast sausages and deep frying those. That should be amazing dipped in syrup. Also, I need to actually make beignets at some point.

It turned out, I was happy to get this practice deep frying candy, because a fun opportunity popped up where I'll soon get to deep fry for a crowd! But more on that next time. . .