Funnel cake, the ugly stepsister of cream puff
How is it possible that I’ve been going to the Wisconsin State Fair since childhood and never tried a funnel cake?
I wasn’t even picturing it correctly. It’s a funnel, right? A cone-shaped cake with frosting or fruit or whatever jammed in there.
Not even close. The name, as many of you know, comes from the fact that it’s created by squiggling cake batter through a funnel into a metal ring swimming in hot oil. The sweet treat browns up in about a minute and is served with powdered or cinnamon sugar and, for a buck or two extra, fruit or chocolate or caramel topping.
“I believe the correct term is heavenly melt,” was Mike Huber’s description as he split the dinner plate-sized dessert with Marissa Huber, Wendy Morina and Brandon Elsinger at the fair on Tuesday.
Here’s the thing. The funnel cake, delicious as I now know it to be, lives in the long shadow of the venerable cream puff, the poster food of the State Fair, the one people carry home by the dozen in boxes.
Think of the funnel cake as the ugly stepsister of princess cream puff. No, it’s not hideous to behold, but the prince clearly has eyes for the glob of cream on a wispy puff.
Cream puffs get their own permanent climate-controlled building. Funnel cakes are sold from half a dozen trailers that will be dragged away Sunday to the next fair. You get the idea.
Here’s something I didn’t expect. My first ever bites of a funnel cake were shared with a Viking. I don’t mean a misguided football fan in purple. Mike Durst of Union Grove dresses up in leather like a Norse seafarer and wanders local festivals as a photo op for strangers, usually hundreds a day.
I ran into him in the fair parking lot and we walked in together. He said he buys funnel cake mix at Aldi and makes them himself. That’s how far advanced the 10th-century marauder is compared to me.
He accepted my offer to buy him one for $7 at a place near the grandstand. Pick the whole thing up and bite it, if you dare, or just tear it apart and eat it piece by piece, he advised.
“They’re light and airy and sweet but not overly sweet,” the Viking said.
He likes them better than cream puffs. Actually a lot of the people I bothered as they ate funnel cake rate it higher than cream puffs. It’s hard to say if funnel fans are really peevish at puffs, or if I was just stirring up trouble by making them choose.
For the record, I’ve always enjoyed cream puffs with a Lactaid pill chaser. Give me any fair food that doesn’t contain worms and crickets.
“My choice any day would be a funnel cake over a cream puff,” said Helen
Juric, who split an apple-topped cake with her daughter Amanda Urban and with me. For them it’s a State Fair tradition going back decades, but a food item you’re unlikely to find in real life at a local bakery.
Wikipedia says funnel cakes date back to the medieval Persian world, and many years later were brought by Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants to America and eventually to West Allis, the mythical land where wizards guess your weight or age and pigs are said to race on an oval track for the amusement of the masses.
The funnel cake stand in front of the Expo Center allowed me to step inside and watch how they’re made, sharing the hot oil with elephant ears and deepfried Oreos.
“I love funnel cake,” said worker Kevin Hupp. “I’m trying not to eat the profits.”
He and fellow employee Ethan Hill laughed darkly when I committed the State Fair sin of bringing up the number of calories that put the fun in funnel cake.
“That,” Kevin said, “is a question we don’t ask or talk about.”