Day 13: FryDay Funnel Cakes

What fun! Funnel cake batter is poured through a ...*pause and breathe*  funnel.
Yep! It's true. Quite the original name. And, to make it even more fun, this batter is fried in hot oil and then sprinkled with powdered sugar. And then, for the real thrill, you EAT IT ALL UP! 

*makes pretty decent crepe-like pancakes too, if you use the left-over batter the next morning *

Here's how it played out at our house Friday night.                     * NOTE: It's a 20-step process.

1) Eat dinner, go for a walk, run to Safeway for powdered sugar (and a few other spontaneous buys that were on sale).
2) Make funnel cake batter. So easy and so good!

3) Enlist help from Mr. Friend because frying in a Fry Daddy requires a "daddy", right? And because I thought he could handle the frying and I'd handle the eating sprinkling of the powdered sugar and cinnamon. I put cinnamon on them as well because cinnamon has a healthy effect on the body by helping regulate blood sugar (and my blood sugar was about to need help), as well as a myriad of other good things. Yeah, my logic is off, but did you also know that if you drink a 0 Calorie Diet drink and eat a Snickers bar, the diet drink will cancel out the calories of the Snickers? And of course, if you eat good food with good friends, none of the calories count!? Good thing our family name is Friend. And, by the way, why are calories considered energy? If energy is considered heat, then ice cream shouldn't count as caloric intake if you eat it? hmmm... I digress. 
4) Laugh about and verbally notice (this should not be taken as criticism by the one doing the frying. Just sayin'.) how the gloopy batter isn't clumping together like it is supposed to do. Like the professionals get it to do at the fair. Like what we imagine a funnel cake to look like in our minds eye.
5) Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon.
6) Take a sampling
7) Offer advice on how to do the next one.
8) Take a sampling
9) Add more sugar because the first sprinkling was absorbed and I couldn't see it anymore (if you can't see it, then it doesn't exist, right?)
10) Say, "Well that didn't work either, I'll do the next one".
11) Take another sampling. Oops, it's all gone.

12) Help scrape the dough off of the Fry Daddy's cage and rescue the burning funnel nuggets (that's our new name for this concoction).  

13) Sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon.

14) Yell at the kids to come eat this before it goes bad (funnel nuggets will turn on you with no warning).
15) Say, "Hey, I was going to do the next one" and then say, " Hmmm...that one almost turned out, too bad. I would like to do the next one".
16) Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon.
17) Quickly grab the funnel and batter and hold it over the oil. Start moving funnel and pouring the batter through. It's important that both hands work together here. The hot steam will burn your fingers and you'll move your funnel hand around trying to get away from the steam, but the batter hand will continue pouring and you'll run out of space within the Fry Daddy and then the batter hand will start getting a hot oil steam bath and you'll start muttering some choice words that sound like the work "funnel cake" and your cohort will be sampling funnel nuggets cluelessly nearby all the while. So will your kids. (This is where they hear "those" words that you ask them later in another life, "Where did you hear that?!" and they, trying to protect your dignity, say, "I don't know." God love 'em! They weren't as clueless as you thought).
18) Hear the words from your cohort, "Hey, that one looks pretty good". (you bet your bippy it had better look good!).
19) Say, "I'm done. You can keep doing it if you want to. I'll just sit here and eat watch. I think you're doing a marvelous job".
20) Spend the rest of the evening with a belly ache and red fingers.