Funnel cake or funny cake is a regional food popular in North America at carnivals, fairs, sporting events, and seaside resorts.
Funnel cakes are made by pouring batter into hot cooking oil in a circular pattern and deep frying the overlapping mass until golden-brown. When made at concession stands, a pitcher with an integral funnel spout is employed.
Funnel cakes are typically served plain with powdered sugar, or with jam, cinnamon, Nutella, fresh fruit, or other toppings. In the book I'm Just Here for the Food, Alton Brown recommends they be baked with choux pastry, which expands from steam produced by its high water content.
In North America, funnel cakes were originally associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch region.
In Austrian cuisine the equivalent is called Strauben and is made and served similarly. In Slovenian cuisine they are called flancati . In Finnish cuisine the analogous tippaleipä is traditionally served at May Day (Vappu) celebrations. In Ripon, North Yorkshire, it is also known as "Fennel Funnel Pie". In the Indian subcontinent a similar dessert is called jalebi which has a somewhat chewy texture with a crystallized sugary exterior coating; in Iran this would be known as zulbia and is a popular dessert.
According to one website a 6 inches (150 mm) diameter funnel cake has fewer than 300 calories though most funnel cakes are closer to 9 inches (230 mm) in diameter. Funnel cake can vary dramatically in its caloric content, depending upon which toppings are added.
Famous quotes containing the word cake:
“We had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)