Funnel Cake

Last week I referenced Knott's Berry Farm. There are some similarities between Knott's Berry Farm and Silverwood beyond the Corkscrew, and one of them is funnel cake. The funnel cake at Silverwood brought back some memories.

The first time I ever had funnel cake was at Knott's Berry Farm, probably about 35 years ago. It was so good, and not something you could get anywhere else. You could buy a mix to make it at home, and my father tried that, but it was not the same.

Over the years it started showing up at other places, including basically every other theme park and state fair. That was nice, but then it started changing.

The most notable change for me looking at that sign is why all the fancy toppings? It used to just come with a dusting of powdered sugar.

There has been a trend toward making everything fancier anyway. They put similar toppings on elephant ears, which are perfect with just the mix of cinnamon and sugar. It is probably better that milkshakes are no long so much so similar to "gelatinated gum-based non-dairy beverages", but coating the top with a chocolate base, garnishing that with pretzels, cookie, or candy, and then sticking a brownie on top just seems really extreme to me.

However, I think I understood it better when we ordered our funnel cakes at Silverwood, with no toppings other than powdered sugar, which they poured on pretty thickly.

Funnel cakes are much denser now. I don't think this is necessarily a change in the batter, but I think they use a mold or something to keep the batter in a more uniform shape. They didn't used to be so perfectly round.

They also come out thicker this way, and denser, but cooking that way, with the oil less able to permeate, also makes them drier, which the powdered sugar exacerbates. The toppings may be a compensation for that.

Funnel cakes are good, but the free range cakes were better.

Let the batter run free!