 Well, it’s that time of year. Fair time…and in Oklahoma, as the song states over the radio, ♪♪ It’s a great state of a-fair! ♪♪ Okies look forward to the Oklahoma State Fair. Even in this hoity-toity, modern world, the exhibit buildings are still full of canning and garden entries, photography contests and the tasty baked goods from home cooks itching for a ribbon and winner cash. The barns overflow with show cattle, sheep, pigs and horses and the drone of announcers instructing showmen in the rings permeates the agriculture part of the fairgrounds. And of course, every tornado shelter company, shop building firm and hot tub emporium has a display of their particular pride and joy features, not to mention the thousands of home product hawkers housed in the fairgound’s numerous, spacious expanses of concrete and skylights. This year, Mr. Fix-It and I got to spend a day at the fair with the daughter, son-in-law and 9 month old granddaughter. Now THAT was a trip!! Watching my little grandbaby taking in all of the sights was pretty funny. And sights there were. Oh my goodness. I crawled out of my cave and noticed today’s fashions, evidently for the first time. I’ve decided that the fair is the excuse for any human being to leave home without ever looking in a mirror or even opening their eyes to judge their clothing before walking out the door. Older men and women in jeans obviously from a time when they were in high school and 200 lbs lighter, thought nothing of leaning over to expose bare buttocks and rotund waists. Lace shirts over brightly colored underwear and shorts with holes so big that I wanted to run to the rescue with a safety pin to help them avoid any humiliation – which they obviously felt none. We giggled at men with the dumbest hats, won at various arcades, and they wore them proudly to the chagrin of their wives or girlfriends. Of course, the callers at the arcades wore the same, dumb hats.  The strangest piece of clothing we saw came in the form of boots worn by a boatload of men. I’ve never seen them before. Back in “the day” here in the midwest, we used to have pointy-toed cowboy boats called, “Roach Killers” because one could trap a roach in a corner and squash it with the very pointed toe of the boot. But these new boots defy explanation, as the toes are so long that the longer worn, the more they curl back toward the ankle. We saw one pair of candy apple red and cream boots that curled so much, they looked like jester’s shoes. And I thought our 70’s fashions were weird!  The dirty little secret about going to the fair, though, is that inside every fair-goer’s heart is this lame excuse to go berserk over foods that no ordinary individual would consider logical, let alone healthy! And my daughter is the fair-goer food officianado. She enters the front gate, brushing past the ticket taker with a wave of her receipt and a single-minded purpose in her eyes – heading toward the various food shrines like a teenager preparing to pay homage to Lady GaGa. My daughter walks the entire length of kiosks that stretch for a 100 miles (it felt that way to my feet anyway), to assess what kind of damage can be done to one body in the form of calories, grease and salmonella. Then, she maticulously makes a list in her mind ordering which confection will be first and which will be last. Sweet always comes first and protein comes last.       One of the fair treats that is of lesser offense to the health conscious psyche is the funnel cake. The batter is very basic and if cooked in a healthy fat and dusted with just a little powdered sugar, one can share a fair-sized cake with nine or ten people and really feel smug over the idiot eating the chocolate bacon!   The batter is poured into a funnel and then evenly distributed in concentric rings into a deep vat of hot peanut oil to achieve the characteristic pile of crisp and tender bread dusted with powdered sugar. For extra money, the cooks will add fresh strawberries topped with whipped cream to make this confection so much more healthy. I said that it’s fruit, right?!! Well, funnel cakes are something that this cook has been making at home for years. The kids loved them and it was a treat that I could give them on occassion without having to fork over $100 for tickets to go have someone else make them at the fair. I thought that I’d share my recipe with you and that way, you can have your own fair experience at home, just in case you don’t make it to the real thing!! Ingredients: 2 cups milk 2 eggs 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp vanilla 1 tbsp melted butter 2 to 2 1/2 cups sifted flour Directions:  Add milk to eggs and beat until frothy. I use my small, electric hand mixer.  Add salt  And vanilla  In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup of flour with baking powder.  Add the one cup of flour and baking powder, a little at a time, to the egg mixture and continue to beat.  Continue to add second cup of flour, slowly, until batter has the consistency of a thin pancake batter or pudding. Add more if needed, but do so slowly so as to not add too much.  Beat in melted butter  Pour batter into a medium sized funnel, keeping the tip of your finger over the funnel end to prevent any batter from running through.  Over a skillet of 1/2″ to 1″ oil – peanut or coconut oil is good – heated to 350º, remove finger from the end of the funnel and move the funnel around to create concentric circles in the hot oil. After getting the size cake you want, bring the batter back over the cake to add more circles.  Turn the funnel cake when browned and cook the other side.  Remove and drain on a paper towel. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, using a shaker or sifter. Serve hot. For an added tasty treat, put fresh, sliced and sweetened strawberries on top and a dollop of whipped cream. I hope the fair is coming near you!!  |
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Posts Tagged ‘batter’
Fair Food At Home!!
Thursday, September 20th, 2012
Belgian Waffles
Monday, October 11th, 2010
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Of course, with any new-fangled idea, there were bugs, the major one being that when the cook used one of these pans, what looked like bugs appeared in the scrambled eggs or the white gravy, due to flakes of the nonstick surface loosening. Small sheets of Teflon® floated in the cooking food and small, shiny hints of the base metal were exposed. If you were the least bit paranoid, you worried that your family was ingesting some poisonous substance that the government had invented to get rid of half of the population to save the planet. If you weren’t paranoid, you surmised that maybe Teflon® wasn’t such a great invention after all. Then came the nonstick surface that was co-mingled with the base metal of the cooking utensil. That was better. I think that T-Fal® was one of the first. It worked pretty well, but we quickly figured out that nonstick didn’t really mean, NONSTICK. It just meant “not-as-likely-to-stick-especially-if-you-use-oil-to-coat-the-pan-like-you-did-for-your-old-pans-that-were-not-nonstick.” I had a whole set of T-Fal® and still have a few cookie sheets, but while they were the “thing” in the ‘70’s, as I became more and more entrenched in the kitchen, I gravitated back to my perfectly seasoned, cast iron skillets and wonderful three-ply bottomed, heavy-weight, stainless steel pots and pans. Wouldn’t trade them for the world. It is with this background of wisdom that I should ask myself, “What were you thinking?” because, recently, I couldn’t resist the purchase of a nonstick surfaced Belgian waffle maker that was on sale. Actually, another waffle iron was on sale, but the store was out and because I had such a pained expression on my face and the manager probably thought that my gray hair indicated that I might be hard to get along with, I was handed a more expensive, with more gadgets, Belgian waffle iron at the sale price. It had a timer that beeped! I took my prize home, predictably thrilled at beating the system of sales, and quickly unboxed it to prepare for the next day’s breakfast surprise for Hubby – waffles topped with strawberries and whipped cream. I read the directions for the batter – easy enough – decided on how I was going to change it (added vanilla) because it isn’t in my nature to just follow directions, and made sure that I had all ingredients required. I got up the next morning, whipped up the batter in a matter of minutes, heated the waffle iron until the light went out and carefully measured ¼ cup of batter into each section. Closing the lid, I flipped the whole assembly on the stand, over to the opposite side as per the directions. Steam gushed from the seam of the surfaces and a wonderful sizzling sound let me know that breakfast was on its way. The timer automatically began its countdown.  At the ear-piercing shriek of the waffle siren, I jumped out of my skin and rushed to flip the waffle iron back to the other side of the stand. I gently lifted the lid – well – attempted to lift the lid, but nothing separated. I got a plastic fork and slipped it between the layers of metal to carefully pry them apart but nothing budged. But it’s a nonstick surface! The box said so…. no oil needed. It’s 2010! It’s new and improved! I flipped it back to the other side and tried gently pulling the sections apart. No dice. I turned it over to its original position and thought, “Maybe I’m not pulling hard enough.” I gave it a hard tug and jerked the top lid off of the bottom surface. One half of the waffle traveled with the lid and the other half stayed on the bottom. Now you know that you are NOT to use ANY metal utensils on nonstick cookware. Plastic only. And so, I took the plastic fork and carefully slid it under the top half of the waffle. Fully expecting for the waffle to lift off the surface, I was sorely disappointed. The tines of the fork slipped through the cooked dough, and succeeded only in removing a couple of chunks. I tried a different location with the same results. At this point, I was frustrated and I started digging at the center of the mess. Some of the pastry lifted out of the multiple indentions, but the majority remained adhered to this “nonstick” epitome of false advertising. The tines on the fork broke. Of course, it never occurred to me, at the time of purchase, to see if the two cooking surfaces could be removed for easy cleaning. And of course they could not be removed. They opened into a gigantic “L” with teeth, every tooth encrusted with waffle plaque. The lettering on the base cautioned, “DO NOT IMMERSE”. Why would I need to immerse it?? It is nonstick, for crying out loud! My only recourse was to concentrate on one surface at a time, digging out as much of the now rock-hard waffle as possible. I poured hot water just to the batter level to soak and finally washed with a brush, repeating the process for the other side. This took most of the morning. Did I mention that my husband ate cereal that day?  Yes, all of the labor saving brilliance that is dangled before us cooks have obviously been created by inventors who never really watched the process of food preparation and cleanup, let alone attempted it themselves. However, I will say that one such item HAS put its comrades to shame, as it has proved to perform in exactly the way it was intended. It has made available for my dear husband, the Belgian waffles that he loves, baked on the aforementioned, offending waffle maker. This product states on its label, “no stick, fat free, cholesterol free, calorie free, sodium free, naturally clear”…Yep. It’s spray olive oil in a can and it works like a charm. Who would have ever thought of putting oil on the surface of a cooking utensil to keep food from sticking? What will they think of next?? |
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1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour or pastry flour 1 tbsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp sweetener (honey, sugar, splenda, etc.) |
1 3/4 milk (2%, whole, skim) 2 eggs, separated 2 tbsp vegetable oil Possible additions: 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 cup chopped pecans |
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