Fair fast food not for the fastidious

Deep-fried Twinkies win taste test
by Corey Young, Staff Writer
It’s come to this: we are mixing our unhealthy foods together
now, frying sugary sweets in vats of hot oil, that artery-clogging
approach to meal preparation.
As if treats like Twinkies, Snickers bars and Oreo cookies
weren’t bad enough on their own, a new booth at the Sonoma County
Fair is frying them in oil, slathering them with chocolate,
strawberry or caramel sauce, with a sprinkling of powdered sugar on
top.
Score one for the fats and sugars.
The really bad news is, this fried fare is really good, at least
in moderation. I plunked down $13 for one of each item — Twinkie,
Snickers, a plate of five fried Oreos and a Hostess cupcake (I
half-expected the clerk to ask, “would you like a cardiologist with
that?”)
Sonoma West Times and News intern Ryo Miyazaki and I settled
down at a table inside the fairgrounds’ Mexican Village for an
impromptu taste test.
We weren’t sure what to expect; I don’t think either of us ever
thought we’d be discussing the finer points of a greasy, crusty
candy bar on a stick.
With our plastic forks and a pile of napkins, we dug in. I
sampled the Twinkie first, figuring that since the booth where we
bought it had a cartoon fried Twinkie on the side, it must be a
popular choice.
The crusty outside of the Twinkie, coupled with the lines of
chocolate sauce running over it, made me think for some reason of
an egg roll covered in motor oil. Not backing down, though, I took
a bite.
I recall the first words out of my mouth: “Well, that’s fried,
all right.” I could smell and taste the oil in the Twinkie, which
still had its creamy center.
My mom was never one to buy Twinkies or other pastry-type items
for our school lunches, despite our constant pleas while she
wheeled the cart up and down the grocery aisles.
But I’ve made enough lunchtime trades with friends and gone on
enough late-night convenience store sprees during finals week in
college to recognize that what I was eating, underneath the crispy
dough was, indeed, a Twinkie.
I give it my highest rating, and if I go back to the fair I
wouldn’t be opposed to trying another one, perhaps with strawberry
topping. If you eat only one fried pastry dish this summer, make it
a Twinkie. If you eat two, don’t blame me.
Actually, I also enjoyed the Oreos, which were like a warmed-up
version of the soggy mush you get after you soak them in a glass of
milk. And, of course, there’s the coating of fried animal fat on
the outside to give it that unique flavor.
But they were pretty good, Ryo and I decided. In his native
Japan, Oreos are popular treats, but they aren’t as sweet as here
and they never come fried, he said.
We finished off our taste test with the candy bar and the
Hostess cupcake. Neither were as good as the Twinkie or Oreos —
the taste of oil didn’t seem to go as well with the chocolate
cupcake as it did with the vanilla Twinkie, and the melted candy
bar wasn’t sticking to its doughy outside.
“It’s like a warm candy bar sandwich,” I said.
We came away from our taste test deciding that the Oreos and
Twinkie were the front-runners.
“This is the winner,” said Ryo, taking another bite of the
Twinkie. We polished off the rest of the snacks before returning to
the booth (left of the south entrance to the Mexican Village area)
for some hard-hitting investigative reporting.
“Can I see you fry a Twinkie?” I asked.
Cook Marvin Aguilar kindly obliged, letting me in the back of
the trailer to watch a Twinkie bob up and down in hot oil for about
45 seconds. Marvin said he’s been at the fair every day so far, and
the new fried treats are quite popular. He’s even been on TV news,
showing off these latest additions to fair food.
The sweets are first dipped in batter, then cooked just long
enough to get the batter a nice golden-brown color.
Deanna Peterson, taking orders out front, said the booth sold
more than 440 fried items last Thursday.
“Most of it is Twinkies. Yesterday it was the Twinkies and the
candy bars,” she said. “We’re actually experimenting with a Ho Ho
today.”
Big Jim’s Concessions from Novato owns the fried Twinkie booth
and brought the recipe to Sonoma County from back east, Peterson
said. It’s proven to be a hit at other fairs in the state and at
this one, which runs through Aug. 4.
“We’ve been doing good here,” said Marvin. He offered me the
Twinkie he had just fried, but still feeling full from the taste
test, I passed.
I suggested he take it, and I’d snap some more photos, but he
declined.
“I don’t eat that stuff,” he said.