Culinary Types: Hostess Snack Cakes

Sunday, August 11, 2013

A Sugar High with a Cupcake Cutie

My friend Amanda knows a lot about human behavior. So she probably knew it would take me all of two seconds to agree to join her for a class on baking Nostalgic Snack Cakes at the Institute for Culinary Education (ICE) in New York City.

Who could resist such an offer? After all, we both grew up in suburbia during the golden age of lunchbox snack treats, where nobody really fretted about a little sugar or empty calories in the diet and hyperactivity was euphemistically described as “school spirit.” Suzy Q’s and Ding Dongs are our ethnic food! Having already delved into the art of the homemade Twinkie, I’m anxious to expand my snack cake repertoire.

The class is led by Chef-Instructor Faith Drobbin. She’d laid out a sampling of snack cakes that she’s prepared in advance. There are freshly turned Twinkies, Suzy Q’s, Funny Bones, and Ding Dongs.

We chat about the different names of cakes generated by the longtime rivalry between snack cake giants Hostess and Drakes. Was it a Ding Dong or a Ring Ding? What’s the difference between a Twinkie and a chocolate glazed Twinkie, called a Chocodile? Is the filling Marshmallow Fluff, or buttercream? What’s the difference between a Yankee Doodle and a Sunny Doodle? What were Captain Cupcake’s actual super powers? The class is filled with snack cake aficionados, but I’m just a little suspicious of the woman in the back of the room chomping on a Granny Smith apple. Who let her in?

Chef invites us to try the samples she’s laid out. Everyone is very polite and restrained, but after 5 minutes I can’t hold back.

“I’m going in,” I whisper to Amanda. We divvy up a chocolate glazed, cream filled Ding Dong. It is a heavenly, light, devils food cake, filled with sinfully good cream filling. "Do I have chocolate in my teeth?" I self-consciously ask Amanda.

Chef Drobbin does a fine job of demonstrating the Yellow Snack Cake recipe, and the Chocolate Snack Cake recipe. Here’s where I have a snack cake epiphany. Every single snack cake in the universe consists of either yellow cake or chocolate cake, with cream filling and a chocolate glaze. No matter what the snack cake may be, the recipes for the individual components are the same. If you master the recipes, you unlock the caloric key to infinite variations. At this moment, I feel a little like Escoffier and Twinkie the Kid all at the same time.

Amanda’s insight is just a little different as she eyes the Chocodile. “I really think the key learning here is that everything is better dipped in chocolate,” she remarks.

We get ready to bake, and there are lots of questions from the class. How do you get the goop in? How big should we make the Twinkies?

“How big do you want your snack cake?” comments Amanda. “These are First World problems!”

Chef advises us that with the proper recipes, pans and techniques we can create a fine facsimile of any iconic snack cake. Yet they won’t taste exactly the same. Ours will taste better, because we’re using butter and eggs.

We start baking and needless to say, as the day proceeds, our vegetable intake is minimal, and our carbohydrate consumption is close to astronomical.

We prepare Chocolate Snack Cake for cupcakes, Ding Dongs and Chocodiles. At times, we find ourselves engulfed in a cloud of cocoa, but when it all comes together, the batter is dark and glossy.

We decide to double the batter for the Yellow Snack Cake Mix. This is a bit of a no-no, and Chef is somewhat peeved. When we’re done, we actually have enough snack cakes to host a birthday party at PS 143 in Queens.

Amanda becomes quite accomplished at injecting cream filling into the cupcakes.

And, we perfect the high art technique of snack cake glazing.

Some of it resembles Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory. At one point, a blob of icing lands on Amanda’s big toe. She has worn flip flops to the class. I really need to talk to that young lady about proper kitchen attire.

The final touch? We express our inner doodler, by applying the squiggle of icing on the top of the Hostess Cupcakes. We have prepared enough empty calories to power an army, and we box up our cakes and head for the subway. I have a sugar hangover. Amanda complains that she’s thirsty and she has a tummy ache. She returns home to consume a large helping of animal protein, and enjoy the adoration of her daughter who has been waiting all day for treats from Mom’s class.

Me? Well, we were such a well frosted, high producing team that I think we may have a future in snack cakes. I think our next class should be, “How to Make Your First Million by Hosting a Neighborhood Bake Sale.” But first, I'm planning my next marathon bike ride.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Demise of the Twinkie

It was not the kind of news I needed to hear at the end of a long, hard week. I’d only been seated at my desk for a few moments, when I get the word – Hostess Brands is shutting down. They will immediately cease production of a legion of iconic snack cakes. While somewhere there is probably a registered dietitian rejoicing at the news, my reaction is dramatically different. I feel an immediate and alarming sense of panic. I leave my hot coffee on my desk, and rush to the lobby. I’ve got to find Twinkies!!!

Quickly I make my way to three different Manhattan stores and I come up empty handed. All I can find are bags of granola, Power Bars and gluten-free snacks. Honesty, sometimes Manhattan is way too health conscious for its own good.

I'll be honest. I may like to cook from scratch, but I am hardly a food snob. I grew up in the 1960s when Swanson TV Dinners, Cool Whip, Shake ‘n Bake Chicken and Tang were considered haute cuisine. And, then there was the Twinkie, that spongy yellow torpedo of cake filled with whiter-than-white marshmallow cream. I would pack one in my lunchbox every day in junior high school. The svelte blonde bombshell in eighth grade that I had a huge crush on would purse her lips, wink at me and call me “Twinkie the Kid.” Twinkies made me a chick magnet.

Much of the news coverage of the past 48 hours has rather cruelly categorized the Twinkie as “junk food,” but I have a different view. The Twinkie sits squarely at the apex of edible art, culinary innovation and youthful sugar cravings. Some culinary philosophers even see the Twinkie as a groundbreaking precursor of the molecular gastronomy trend. I mean, foam is foam. Why spend a lot of money if you can just pick up a pack of Twinkies in the deli.

The Twinkie inspired some of my early culinary efforts. I once served a dessert called “Undescended Twinkies,” a caloric suburban masterpiece created by Jane and Michael Stern for their book “Square Meals.” A postmodern take on the trifle, eight Twinkies are floated on a lake of orange Jell-O blended with 7-Up, pineapple juice and vanilla ice cream. The Sterns wrote, “If the gelatin is properly chilled, it will resist the Twinkies. You will push them in; they will slowly rise. It is a tense moment, like the scene in Psycho when Tony Perkins tries to sink Janet Leigh’s car. But remember, you don’t want them buried. Just semidescended in the lush, peach-colored ooze.”

Don’t judge me. Some of my dinner guests were horrified but I thought it was the coolest dessert ever. If you dare to raise an eyebrow at “Undescended Twinkies,” you ought to check out “The Twinkies Cookbook” published by Hostess in 2006 (Yes, I own a copy). It includes recipes for “Twinkie Burritos,” “Chicken-Raspberry Twinkie Salad,” “Twinkie Lasagna,” and a “Ribbon and Bows Twinkie Wedding Cake.” Enough said.

But I digress. Back at my desk, facing a bleak and Twinkie free future, I yearn to commiserate with kindred spirits. On Facebook, my friend Allison says she’ll locate a stash of Twinkies for me in Pittsburgh. I consider purchasing a plane ticket. Mad Me-Shell sends me a recipe for do-it-yourself Twinkies, and notes that her favorite poutine shop in Chicago will be paying homage by serving deep-fried Twinkies at their Sunday Brunch. Zany is oddly absent from this conversation, but finally surfaces on Saturday morning with this comment: “Sorry for the late reply. I’ve been on a Twinkie shopping spree across Chicago.” She also asks Mad what time she should arrive for brunch.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I take to the Internet, and locate a box of ten Twinkies on amazon.com. I am distracted for a moment before purchasing, and I note that the in-stock supplies are dropping like a stone. So I hit the orange “Buy Now with 1-Click” button. Better to be safe than sorry. It’s a good thing, too, because when I get back to Long Island that night, I visit three more stores and the shelves are bare. I’m too late. The Twinkie addicts have been hoarding all day. A last check of the Internet shows that Twinkies are now being auctioned at a premium price on ebay. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if my box of Twinkies actually makes it into my hands. There’s a lot that can happen between the warehouse and my front steps in this post apocalyptic Twinkie-less world.

Which might mean I ate my last Twinkie this past April at a “Mad Men” style dinner hosted by my college roommate Ford MacKenzie. I brought dessert – a platter of Twinkies served with Chocolate Pudding and Dream Whip. The Twinkies were light and luscious – a little pillowy taste of heaven with a perky artificial aftertaste.

Okay, so it’s not like I dined on Twinkies regularly at this stage in my life. But, the thought of Twinkies going the way of the dinosaur, the Edsel and Gourmet Magazine is a bit unnerving. It was comforting to know that the frothy, light Twinkie seemed to endure in an often dark and uncertain world. R.I.P. Twinkie the Kid.