After seeing all those people lining up for Twinkies at Jewel yesterday, I started thinking about making my own. They had to start with a small batch in a home/test kitchen originally, right?  So there had to be Twinkie recipes, right?  Yeah, lots of Twinkie recipes, but most used stuff I just didn’t have or want to go out and buy – after all, this is the Cheapo way of baking…

And I’ll be upfront here and say my first attempt is not perfect, but I kinda see where the next batch will go, based on this one.  So here it is – learn from my mistakes …

sorry, this shot is from "Wok Your Dog" recipes...

Every recipe I read online started with a pound cake mix.  Only trouble is that the stockpile doesn’t contain any of those, just the last of the freebie cake ones, so I tried substituting a yellow cake.  For the filling, you can go with the traditional vanilla or any of a variety of tastes:  almond, peppermint, orange, lemon…

Preheat your oven to about 325° before you actually need to – makes the kitchen nice and warm and keeps the dogs happy..  I started with four egg whites in the old KitchenAid, where I mixed them on high until I got stiff peaks.  Then I poured in the yellow cake mix and water.  Used about 2/3 cup of tap water – next time I’ll add more to make the batter thinner.  Let the mixer beat this until smooth (medium speed for a couple of minutes).  At this point it’s very tasty…

While the batter is mixing, make some disposable twinkie forms or use the little cake pans I used.  Basically, what you’re doing is forming a round shape around the jar to simulate the twinkie shape.  Make sure you grease those suckers up good – I used Pam.  And yes, that is a very large roll of foil (buck at a garage sale – got a plastic wrap one, too!)

Here’s another big mistake: Too much batter in the forms! You will end up with the “big Twinkie” Dr. Egon Spengler describes in Ghostbuster.  The taste will be fine, but the filling to cake ratio will be off.  I checked the cakes about 20 minutes after I put them in – a knife inserted in the middle of a cake (or you could use a toothpick, you wuss) came out clean.

While the cakes are cooling, prepare the filling.  Recipes all called for powdered sugar.  Since powdered sugar is just subjugated granular, I always toss garden variety sugar in the Vitamix (or any blender) and let ‘er rip.  Works every time.

In the mixer bowl I put about a cup of powdered sugar and coconut oil and a half stick of butter.  Every recipe called for margarine and many called for marshallow cream, neither of which I keep around, but if you’re going for the authentic junk food taste, pick them up.  After it creamed for a few minutes I added lemon extract.  Again, this is a personal preference, but as FirstBorn always says “You just can’t leave a recipe alone, can you?”  Guilty as charged.  The genuine Twinkie filling always seemed to have a slight grit so I partially pulverized about a 1/2 cup of sugar and added it to the bowl.   Remember, people never complain that their Twinkies are too sweet!  I used a plastic straw to poke three holes in the flat bottom of each cake.  Filled the injector tool from the Baby Cake Pops and injected those suckers but good.

To recap:

1.  Make the batter thinner so the finished cake is very, very light. I should have added more water.
2. Fill your Twinkie forms only about 1/4 full – I filled mine half and look at the mutants I created!
3. Don’t skimp on the filling you inject. The interior will absorb lots more than you’d believe possible!

And there you have it. But you know what?  Now I’m hungry for Suzy Qs…

Whenever I see a great deal on those gigantic Perdue roasters, I make sure to grab one (or maybe more) for the freezer.  Yesterday we had the traditional roast chicken, so I knew there’d be lots left over and planned accordingly.

I pulled the meat from the bones and mixed it in a large pot with a bag of baby carrots, peas, two slivered onions, two containers of the flavored cooking cheese and broccoli. Since only the carrots needed loger cooking time, I nuked them for two minutes before added to the mixture in the pot. Cooked with a low flame for about ten minutes, just to meld all the flavors, then turned it into a baking dish and topped with a pack of the Fresh Take mozzarella/bread crumbs variety. Bake in a fast oven (I used 450°) for about 10-15 minutes, just to toast the crumbs and make it look purdy…

Guess it passed the taste test!

You can search older posts to find the actual OOP on the ingredients, but I believe the peas were free, the Kraft cheese was 23¢, carrots were free after store cat, cooking creams were also cheap – probably the broccoli was the most expensive part!

The three pork shoulder steaks I got for free at Jewel with overage a couple of days ago needed to be cooked and I was too lazy to come up with anything fancy, so decided to dump them all in the Crock-pot with a sliced onion, my marinated garlic oil, two packs of the Knorr’s homestyle stock from the Dominick’s freebie clearance deal last year and water.  I’ll let it cook on high for most of the day, until the meat falls off the bone.  There’s some cilantro oil from the BlogHer2012 convention which I’ll add to the pot in a bit.  You also might see in the picture a bag of Wild Harvest rice from the Jewel clearance rack and a few beautiful avocados from Walmart.

Might be thinking we eat a lot of tacos here and you’d be right.  It’s the one food Divas won’t complain about, it’s fast and easy and works great for leftovers.  And once it’s in the Crock pot, I can get on with living.  Living means payng bills, washing floors and doing laundry.  and we all couldn’t wait until we were grownups and could do just what we wanted…