Dress Rehearsal

I got a call from Ashley a couple weeks ago, and she had an exciting opportunity to tell me about. You already know she is a fan of the blog, and her sister is a fan of the blog, but it turns out her dad is also a fan. What's more, Bernie English is the general manager of a the Orchards Hotel in Williamstown, MA. In the midst of planning a Halloween event for his guests, he thought a fun way to push it over the top would be to instead push it Off The Deep End.

So, Ashley was calling me up to offer me the chance to drive out to The Orchards in Williamstown and deep fry Halloween candy for a party. I was a little nervous at first, and wasn't sure I could make it work, since it is happening on a Thursday night. I've also never tried deep frying for a large group before, and I didn't know if I could keep stuff coming fast enough for the masses. But, according to Google Analytics, readers on six continents have read my posts. Now here was my chance to bring delicious deep-fried fare straight to my adoring fans. I realized that there was no way I could let this opportunity pass me by. I didn't want to end up like Harry at the end of Dumb and Dumber saying, "Don't worry, we'll catch our break too. . . just gotta keep our eyes open."

I met up with Bernie one weekend when I was traveling up to Williamstown, and we hammered out the details. I also got to meet the chef and I got a tour of the kitchen. I got to see the "small" deep fryer that I'd be using, which was still much bigger than mine, leading to a bit of deep-fryer envy. It did however, allay my worries about not being able to cook enough food quickly. I'm very curious to see the bigger one.

In preparation for this event, I figured I should do some practicing. My roommate, and I decided to cook corn dogs for dinner, and then I bought a ton of candy at the supermarket. I bought so much candy, in fact, that I felt I should reassure the cashier that don't generally eat like this. I won't list everything I bought, because I didn't get around to trying it all . . . but I will eventually.

For dinner, we started with corn dogs. In my last corn dog attempt, all the pieces tasted good, but they didn't stay together at all. I theorized that I should have made the oil hotter. I cooked it at 350F last time, but cranked it all the way up to 375F this time. The batter is the same as last time: a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix made following the directions on the box. And here we go. . .

First try: This one looks more like an ear of corn than a corn dog. But, it stayed on the hot dog, so, this is a good start.

Second try: Not totally covered, but it was a more even coating. We're getting there.

Third try: This time I rolled the hot dog in flour before putting it into the cornmeal. It looks very pretty, with the only real flaw being that crack down the center.

Fourth try: I also used flour on this one, and it looks beautiful if I do say so myself. Again there was a small crack, but otherwise it looked really nice and that crack didn't effect the stability of the corn dog.

Here is a delicious-looking cross section.

What did we learn? Well, corn dogs are awesome, but actually we already knew that. We did learn that 375F is definitely the right temperature, and a light layer of flour on the hot dog is clearly a good idea. Interestingly, it didn't seem like the flour was helping right after applying it, because then the corn meal seemed to slide off the hot dog even more easily. The corn muffin mix starts to stick after a little bit though, and the pictures certainly show a clear difference.

After making four corn dogs, I used the rest of the corn muffin mix to make hush puppies. I didn't quite get the shapes right, but they were good.

Then it was time for dessert. I had sent out an open invitation to a bunch of people to come eat fried candy with me, but aside from my roommates, only my friend Norman showed up. Norman is quite the chef, and is the author of monday night menu, a food blog that is slightly more sophisticated than mine.

I started with a 3 Musketeers bar. This was tasty, but I don't think deep frying added much too it. It might have actually made it a little less fluffy than a 3 Musketeers normally is. I certainly didn't complain eating it, but it didn't blow me away.

Next, I tried a marshmallow. I had been wanting to try this (and eventually a s'more). I stuck the marshmallow on a skewer and rolled it in the batter. The marshmallow expends like you'd expect, so it pushed its way out of the batter shell slightly. This was good, but it didn't change substantially. The marshmallow itself tasted like a marshmallow that had been blown up in the microwave, only it had a delicious coating on it. Looking back, I missed a chance here to put sprinkles or something else on the outside of the batter. I think that could have made a huge difference here.

Norman, meanwhile, tried a Baby Ruth, and he really liked how toasty the deep frying made the peanuts. Dan deep fried a Twinkie, one of his favorite deep fried treats, and Tyler got a little creative. He folded up a slice of white American cheese, dipped it in the batter and deep fried it. I should note that Tyler is a very picky eater, and he loved American cheese dipped in pancake batter and deep fried. This gave me a lot of confidence that whatever I deep fry for the hotel guests, they are going to like. He also dipped a colby jack cheese stick in the same batter and fried that. I tried bite of both of these things, and I also thought they were quite good.

Then I tried a Snickers bar and added a little powdered sugar for good measure. This was good, and I've had a lot of debates with people about which would be better, a Milky Way or a Snickers, but this is actually this first time I had tried the Snickers. I always said I thought I would like the Milky Way more, and after trying both, I do, in fact, prefer Milky Way. The Milky Way is a simpler, and it really gives the caramel center stage.

I finished up with a Milky Way covered in rainbow sprinkles. Although it still wasn't as good as the cookie dough, it was totally delicious, and the sprinkles definitely improved an already delicious deep-fried Milky Way.

Norman deep fried a Butterfinger covered in sprinkles, and he liked it, but it turned into a very different candy bar after coming out of the oil. All those flakes fused together in a solid core that Norman was chewing on for a while.

We didn't try a lot of what we had bought, but I was very full and from what we had tried, I was very satisfied that I could deliver a delicious, fattening, evening of snacks to the Orchards guests.

In addition to this round of practice deep frying, I also had officially-licensed Off The Deep End postcards made up to give out during the event. And, I am told a couple of different media outlets will be covering the event. This could be just the exposure I need to get that seventh continent. (Deep frying is very warm, so you'd think it'd be a popular activity in Antarctica.) My write-up will be the next post, and as of press time, the party begins in one hour!

Corn Dogs

I've been excited for this one ever since I got a deep fryer. I love corn dogs. I used to eat a ton back in high school. I think my family used to buy them in packs of 20 or maybe 40; I don't exactly remember, I just know we always had a lot of them around. They microwaved in 1:05, (The package said one minute, but the extra five seconds really puts them over the top!) and they were basically the perfect snack for late night after a party, in the afternoon, and once in a while I even ate them for breakfast. After hearing this, my high school baseball coach once remarked, "You're going to die a very young man."

Upon starting the blog, I realized a lot of stuff gets deep fried on a stick. But, ridiculously, I couldn't find normal popsicle sticks anywhere in Boston. After checking out several supermarkets, a Target, and a craft store, I hadn't found any. This delayed my first attempt at corn dogs until I finally found 50 in a hardware store. Soon after, my Mom found a ton at a dollar store (200 for a dollar!). Aren't Moms great! Bottom line is, I now have 650 popsicle sticks, so that shouldn't be a problem for me for a long time.

Once I had the popsicle sticks, I bumped corn dogs up to the top of my deep frying list. You can find a lot of different corn dog recipes out there. This recipe is amazingly easy -- exactly what I am looking for in a recipe! And it was perfect since we always keep Jiffy corn muffin mix in the house. I'll even post the full recipe here for you:

1 pkg. Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix
1 pkg. hot dogs
Mix corn muffin mix following directions on box. Roll hot dogs in batter. Deep fry.

Rolling them in the corn muffin mix was easy enough, although it was slightly challenging to get a full and even coating over the dogs. Like my last post, I used one Hebrew National dog and one Nathan's dog.

The only problem is that it didn't say what temperature to use. Normally, I would just go straight to 375F with that, but since I had just cooked the rippers at 350F, I decided to put these at 350F as well. I think this wasn't the right call. At first, the corn dogs looked like they were cooking great. But, a couple minutes in, the corn meal opened up and fell off the dogs. I suspect that if I had cooked them at 375F, then they would have hardened a little more on the outside faster, and they would have stayed on. So, although I haven't proved it yet, from this, I may have stumbled upon another rule of thumb for deep-frying: When in doubt, max out the temperature (375F). I am looking forward to trying this again soon, and seeing if that works. If it doesn't work, my next variation will be to roll the hot dogs in flour first to help the corn meal stick.

Despite them falling apart slightly, I enjoyed these a lot. It was a little bit of a letdown, since I had been so excited, but I am now motivated to try these again soon and get it right. Again, I liked the Nathan's dog more than the Hebrew National one, but both were good.

After the cooking the tempura veggies that weren't that great, the rippers that didn't rip, and now the corn dogs that fell apart, I was feeling like I was in a bit of a deep frying slump. To help get me back on track, I used some of the corn meal batter I had mixed to make hush puppies. These were excellent just like last time, and right off the bat, I was able to make nice round ones, so I felt good about that.

I was still left wanting to try something else though. I took a quick look through the refrigerator, and saw some leftover macaroni and cheese. This recipe for deep fried mac and cheese specifically mentioned chilling it overnight before coating and deep frying, so I felt good about this one. Also it is a bread crumb recipe, which I think always get the job done.

When I removed chunks of the mac and cheese from the container, they would start to fall apart almost instantly. When I put them in the flour, they fell apart even more. Then when I moved the loose flour covered macaroni pieces into the egg, they still didn't form easily into clumps. BUT...once I put them into the bread crumbs, I could easily shape them into small little golf ball sized spheres. I cooked these at 350F too (the recipe says so).

These were really good! And, they were made with several day old mac and cheese leftovers. I can only imagine how good they would be if the mac and cheese was a little fresher and a little cheesier. The next day my roommate and I made more of these with the remaining leftover macaroni, and they were again very tasty. So, bread crumbs came to the rescue again in hopefully snapping me out of a mini slump.

For my next post, a friend who is an avid reader of my blog, a blogger herself, and a fellow deep frying enthusiast was visiting from out of town and was excited for the chance to cook something with me. She'll provide some comments as well as we try a new take on two classic kids' breakfast favorites: Pop Tarts and Toaster Strudels.