My niece is a genius. Yes, she is one of the sharpest, brightest, most creative and beautiful little girls I know. But I’ve now confirmed she is a CULINARY genius as well. My sister-in-law, Rachel, had mentioned a loooong time ago that Joslyn misunderstood something she said once and mistakenly thought that she and Rachel were going to make red velvet funnel cakes, instead of cupcakes. Ummm, can you say brilliant?!? I immediately tucked the idea away in the back of my mind knowing one day I’d get around to it and I am so happy to finally announce that day has come!
Now I’ve only made funnel cakes once in my life when I was a kid and I seemed to remember it being fairly easy and so, so fun and most of all extremely YUMMY. The same can pretty much be said this time around but I must have forgotten how MESSY it was. Umm, yes, this was messy. I’m just going to be honest–get a funnel cake pitcher. There’s a reason they make these, people. Do not attempt to use a pastry bag fitted with a large tip (like I did) or a ziploc bag with a corner cut off. I basically had to hold my finger over the hole of the tip while Jeremy poured the batter into the pastry bag (it turned out to be a VERY loose batter) and then release it into the oil Don’t get me wrong…it worked. Oh it totally worked. But messy? Yes. And I HATE messy. As a matter of fact, you could probably even use an empty, clean ketchup bottle which I know a lot of people do for pancake batter, which has a very similar consistency and would be much more controllable. If only I had thought of that before…
Besides the messy factor, this red velvet funnel cake was super easy to mix up, required an absurd amount of red food dye (eek!) and was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS with a generous amount of powdered sugar, vanilla ice cream, homemade whipped cream and fresh blueberries. And if you want just a plain funnel cake but still want to be patriotic, just dye the basic recipe red or blue and voila! I think it is such a fun dessert for the 4th of July!
Enjoy!
- 2 c. All-Purpose Flour
- 1 t. Baking Powder
- 1 t. Salt
- ⅓ c. Cocoa Powder
- 2 Eggs
- 1¾ c. Buttermilk
- 2 t. Pure Vanilla Extract
- Red Food Dye (lots)
- 1 Bottle Vegetable Oil (I used 7 cups)
- Powdered Sugar, Ice Cream, Blueberries, etc for topping
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa. In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla. And the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir together until smooth. Add the red food dye until you have the red color you desire (I used about half of a 1 oz. bottle).
- Pour the oil into a large skillet. Heat oil until a thermometer reaches at least 290 degrees (even though the original recipe called for 360 degrees, mine only ever got to 290 so I went with it and it worked). Release the batter into the oil while making a circular motion. Mine were pretty large, about 7-8 inches in diameter. Fry for about two minutes until it no longer looks raw. Using large tongs, grab the funnel cake in the middle (NOT the edges..they are crisp and could break) and gently turn over. Fry for one more minute and then place on a paper towel lined plate to soak up additional grease. Dust with a generous amount of powdered sugar and top with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and blueberries.
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