SC - So ya wanna Twinkie

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Micaylah wrote:

> I find it kinda funny (okay I find it hilarious) that Cdn's have a patriot
> type food aptly named Beaver Tails and the States have Twinkies! <chuckle>

Well, if a bunch of American troops in the Persian Gulf had asked for Twinkies,
I suppose that would be pretty noteworthy, but at that point I think the
analogy pales a bit. I mean, we have them, I suppose, but it's pretty hard to
measure their importance to our culture.  But I guess Twinkies themselves are
pretty intrinsically funny.

I remember being told by a friend who reads the type of magazine that would
have such an article as I'm about to describe, about a magazine article which
contained simple home-designed recipes to simulate various popular junk foods.
The magazine's version of Twinkies involved actual spongecake (so how close
could it be???) cut in half and/or semi-hollowed out, and filled with a genuine
homemade artifical buttercream made from Crisco vegetable shortening and
confectioners' sugar. As a kid, on the one or two occasions when I have
actually eaten a Twinkie, I always wondered how the exceptionally greasy stuff
in the middle was achieved. Now I know, although ignorance in this case was, in
fact, bliss.

I remember clearly, some time in the late 1970's or so, when the fat in the
Twinkie filling was switched from beef tallow to vegetable shortening. (It was
a big deal that now Twinkies could be washed down with milk and still be
Kosher.)

I also recall hearing someplace, probably in one of Jan What'sizzname's books
on modern / urban folklore, that Twinkies are manufactured in some manner that
involves no baking, but that this is not actually the case. My guess is that
the filling is either frozen or otherwise chemically prevented from
demulsifying and running, so it doesn't matter how hot it gets, and then either
suspended, in the case of a frozen blob of filling, or simply injected, if not
frozen, into the batter, which I would guess is cooked in some kind of mold.

I believe that the original idea was that a Twinkie should be shaped like a
langue-du-chat, or a lady-finger: oblong, but slightly pinched in the middle.
Now they're shaped like gold bricks with rounded tops.

My son is seven and has never eaten one...perhaps if we are dilligent we can
stamp out the plague in our lifetime, and live free again.

Adamantius, who still has an unexplained weakness for the noxious chemical
sweet called Funny Bones, made by Hostess's main corparate rival, Drake's
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com


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