Funnel Cake

Have you ever attended a festival looking forward to getting festival food, only to return home hours later with that elusive funnel cake still on your mind?  Matt, Wylie, and I attended the Fiddlers Convention this weekend in Athens, Alabama where we enjoyed the fantastic music and crafts but never made it as far as the tasty vittles.

Funnel cake batter is pretty much a very thin pancake dough.  If you look around online there are many funnel cake recipes out there but they are adapted for a small army or the Duggar family.  Anytime I have the craving for a funnel cake (usually once a year in October), I want one.  Not five.  The following recipe is for four reasonably sized funnel cakes.

Ingredients:

1 egg

2 cups self rising flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1 tsp salt

vegetable oil for frying

Directions:

1. Mix the first five ingredients.  The batter should be about as thick as buttermilk.  If it is too thick add more milk a tablespoon at a time.  If it gets too thin, add more flour a tablespoon at a time.  The best way to test the batter is to fill the funnel while still in the bowl and raise it, allowing it to flow back in to the bowl.   The batter should flow easily back in to the bowl.  If it doesn't flow, or you have to shake the funnel to get it to flow, it is too thick.  Let your batter to sit a few minutes before frying because it will thicken.  Be sure to thin it back out before frying.  
   
   
   
   
   
2. Heat vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet.  Oil should be about an inch to an inch and a half deep.  This does not require deep frying in a huge pan of oil like you might think it would.  Sprinkle a few drops of tap water in to the oil.  If it crackles, the oil is ready.  If hot oil comes flying at you, it is too hot.  Sorry, I should have warned you sooner.   Once I start frying I lower the temperature slightly.  

    3.  Using the funnel, drizzle the batter in random circles and lines.  I load up my funnel over the bowl, plug          it with my finger, and then remove my finger when it is over the oil, from about six inches above the oil.          By the time you get the funnel full drizzled in to the pan it will be time to flip it over.  I use two wide 

         spatulas, one under and one pressed down on top, lifting it out of the oil, flipping, and gently placing the          uncooked side back down in the oil.  

    4.  Once brown on both sides remove to paper towels to soak up the oil.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar             and serve immediately.  

It ain't pretty, but it'll do in a pinch.