I am a frequent shopper at the Dollar Tree, I always want to know what kind of stuff they are coming up with for $1.25 and on this particular shopping trip I found the best thing yet, a box mix for funnel cake by Enticingly Easy. I have never seen this anywhere and to find it for only $1.25 I knew it was coming home with me. Disclaimer, I’ve never made funnel cake although I believe you can use pancake batter for homemade funnel cake but this mix feels more fun. Let’s dive in and see how this goes.
My only hesitation with make this, or anything similar, is that is calls for 1 cup of vegetable oil to fry in which isn’t that much but it will mostly remain in the pain and need to be disposed of or used somehow. I know the whole world is on an air fryer kick right now but I genuinely can’t see any way to make funnel cake without deep frying the batter so I have to suck it up and accept the product waste.
This recipe is really easy and the process seems simple. You make the batter with an egg, milk and the powdered mix. I expected more of a pancake mix consistency but it was a bit thin and not very sweet, and had a bit of a gross chemical aftertaste. However when I thought about it, the flavor did resemble pancake batter. It just wasn’t anything I would want to eat again until it was cooked.
Once the batter is prepared, you move on to the deep frying process and this is where the nightmare begins, but I won’t blame the box mix for that. The isntructions were easy to follow but heating up my oil felt impossible. They didn’t give a specific temperature for frying but online I found 375 degrees was the sweet spot that I struggled to achieve. I started with too hot and then too cold, and repeat a couple more times. By the time I made my first funnel cake my whole house smelled like fryer oil, it was rough.
Like the name suggests, you are supposed to use a funnel to pour the batter into the pan. I quickly found that my mix had clumps and did not freely flow throuhg the funnel opening so I quickly changed tactics and used the corner of a ziploc bag like a mock piping bag and this worked much better for pouring the batter into the oil, it was just a but messier and I couldn’t measure out the recommended 1/4 cup of batter. I eyeballed the amount and as a result I got 6 funnel cakes out of the batter which is exactly what the box claimed to make.
After topping with powdered sugar, I felt like I was at the carnival. The batter’s chemical flavor went away and these tasted exactly like sweet oil, just like you would expect from a funnel cake. For only $1.25 this mix couldn’t be any better. You can bring the carnival experience to your home!
Leave a Reply