Easy Funnel Cake Recipe

Once Labor Day has come and gone, it's full on fair season, which means it's time for caramel apples, cotton candy, and corn dogs. If your Tilt-A-Whirl days are behind you, though, there's no reason you have to miss out on all of the fried goodness. Not when you can make the king of fair food, the funnel cake, at home.

What Are Funnel Cakes?

The Pennsylvania Dutch are the likely architects of the American-style funnel cake—a lightly sweetened, airy and crisp fried confection that's dusted with confectioner's sugar. At state fairs, funnel cakes are enormous, paper plate-sized affairs that are made by pouring batter from a funnel in a winding circular pattern over hot oil.

The Quick Batter Hack

Traditional recipes call for a fairly standard batter: flour, eggs, sugar, milk, baking soda or baking powder, but I discovered that you can make awesome funnel cakes with "complete" buttermilk pancake mix (look for brands that only require the addition of water). After all, these boxed mixes contain little more than, well, flour, eggs and milk (in powdered form), sugar, and leavening agents. Plus, many county fair funnel cake stands are likely starting from some kind of mix, anyhow. I like to doctor my mix with a touch more sugar and vanilla for true funnel cake flavor.

Keys to Funnel Cake Success

Timing, batter thickness, and funnel spout size are the keys to funnel cake success. If your batter is too thin or watery, you'll have an enormous mess that spreads and won't hold together. If your batter is too gloppy, you won't be able to pour it out in a timely enough fashion to avoid an overdone crunchy mess. A 1-cup funnel with a 1/4-inch opening works well, but a squeeze bottle with the same 1/4-inch opening is even better, if non-traditional. With the bottle, it's easier to control the flow rate.

One of the other benefits of making funnel cakes at home is you can control the size of your cake, and you can top it as you please. Hello, funnel cake ice cream sundae!