Tricks and Tips

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Homemade Funnel Cake and Frappucinos

Hey everyone!

So because this is one of my only weeks back this summer (for reasons mentioned in my last post), I really wanted to hang out with my friends and go on adventures. I've always wanted to go on adventures with my friends, even more so since I've read Paper Towns by John Green (a book review shall be up soon- and if you haven't read it, read it because it's fabulous). Originally, my friends Leah, Melody, and I were planning on hiking to the Stone Living Room (a really cool archaeological site on top of a mountain near our town), but plans fell through when we lost our one and only ride and both Leah and Mel couldn't come over. So I decided to call up two more of my friends Morgan and Melinda. As it turns out, we did have an adventure... only ours was in the kitchen.

This really weird burst of inspiration came to me after reading Emma and Elise's blog www.abeautifulmess.com (they both actually inspired me to make my own blog!). They had this outrageous recipe for funnel cakes which we decided to test that actually turned out to be pretty good!! The recipe is below.


Funnel Cake Batter:
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 cup water
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
oil for frying (do NOT use olive oil- that was my biggest mistake. try vegetable or canola)



Whisk together all dry ingredients. Next stir in water, eggs, and vanilla extract. Mix together until there are NO bubbles and/or bumps in the batter. Pour into a squeeze bottle. We decided to use an icing bag, but overall it was INCREDIBLY messy (we literally had to wash the floor for thirty minutes afterwards- go for the squeeze bottle).

Start to heat up your oil in a heavy duty pot. We decided to use a dutch oven, and it worked surprisingly well. Until we nearly set my house on fire. More on that later. 

We heated our oil up to around 220 degrees. Emma and Elise's recipe called for around 375, but we were too impatient. It still worked incredibly well. Once the oil itself is hot enough, squeeze your batter into the hot oil in circular motions, making sure the batter touches itself so it will stick together. Keep it in the oil until it browns. If the oil is at the correct temperature, it should happen rather quickly. 

Once it's fried, take out the funnel cake and place it on some paper towels to remove the excess oil. Then throw on some powdered sugar and you're good to go!!


We (I) was stupid and decided to use olive oil instead of vegetable or canola oil. Don't try it. It made the overall thing taste a little bit funky. We also thought that we should have added more sugar. It would have made the whole cake taste a little better. But we still enjoyed it. Hence Morgan and Melinda below. 


As good as they were and as fun as they were to make, after we finished frying the oil basically evaporated and smoked up my entire house. It was terrifying. I was legitimately concerned that my house was going to catch on fire-it was that bad. 

We decided to make up for it by making our own Starbucks Frappucinos. We looked up a recipe for a Java Chip Frappucino, and the result was fabulous. It tasted really, really good. 

So of course we took a lot of selfies with it. 





Homemade Java Chip Frappucino Recipe
1 1/2 cup ice
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup Starbucks Coffee (we used the blonde blend)
2-3 tablespoons chocolate chips (we used semi-sweet morsels)

Blend in a blender on the ice crush setting, but blend for NO LONGER than 2 minutes max. I blended our frappucinos for a bit too long, and as a result the chocolate chips and ice separated from the coffee and milk. It was still fantastic though. 

To add even more to our frappucino adventure, we ran up on my roof and drank our drinks and talked. All in all it was an awesome day. I've missed hanging out with my friends. :)



Jesus Christ they scare me sometimes. And here's one last picture of me attempting to be artsy and nearly killing myself in the process. 


Until next time guys!! I can't wait to post more of my last-minute summer adventures. :)

~Meg

P.S. Morgan says hi 

1 comment:

  1. Heheh my uncle helped build the original stone living room. Fer reals.

    ReplyDelete