Yeah!!! New themed month. You know you’re excited, stop trying to act like you’re too cool to express emotions (unless you’re Data of course, at which point, I suppose I could let it slide. Yes, it’s true, aren’t you proud of me Kevin? I made a Star Trek reference. I never thought I’d see the day either, but here we are. What is the world coming too? 😉 ).
In lieu of prepping ourselves for the upcoming season of excessive gluttony (otherwise known as Christmas), I thought I’d dedicate a themed month to, uh…portion control I guess? That’s not even really true, I’m completely lying to you here. Basically, with all the Christmas baking I have going on, I have less space (and time) for other baking (very very 🙁 ). However, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just want a little something sweet that can be whipped up in 10 seconds. So for all of you (but mostly me 🙂 ), I’m dedicating a month to single serve desserts. I can’t promise they can all be whipped up in 2 seconds (despite my claim from two sentences ago), but what I can promise you is that they will all be delicious, and even if they take some time to make, it will be “set it and forget it” time, and not manual labour time (thus giving you more free time to embrace your inner 80s child and celebrate a little Hammer time 😉 I’m only thinking of you here people. So let’s all just crack out our tent-sized pants and do this thing! I know you still have them in your closet, so stop pretending).
I thought I’d start this month off with a little bit of a “go big or go home” attitude and just go for it. Let’s just deep fry the sh*# out of some stuff. That’s the plan here people. If you want to know how this idea came about, it was thusly: I walked into my local bulk store and randomly chose a bunch of stuff that seemed like it had been sadly neglected in the deep frying department and thought I’d finally give it a chance to shine (literally…shine with grease. Mmmmm…grease. Hey, it’s not deep fried butter, so we can at least pretend here that we’re not literally injecting our veins with fat right?).
I essentially went all over the map here to make sure we’re covering all of our sweet sweet bases. For the candy category, may I present to you a little thing called the Swedish Berry and also Fuzzy Peaches? (Fuzzy Peaches because my love for sweet and sour knows no bounds – straight up lemon eater here – and throwing a little bit of deep fried goodness all over that just seemed like an idiot proof idea 🙂 ). For our chocolate category, I’m tossing in a little chocolate covered almonds as well as just a big ol’ square of chocolate.
Mmmm…look at that ooze (to be honest, I don’t know if this photo was a chocolate covered almond, or just straight up chocolate, but they both basically looked the same, so you get the gist 🙂 ).
And finally, as a slight nod to, uh, health? Why not deep fry a little thing called a Medjool date? Possibly stuffing it with some peanut butter before said deep frying occurs? Deep fried things never really look very aesthetically pleasing to me, but even the worst foods get a bit of bump once they’re coated in a delicious layer of crispy goodness.
Case in point on the hideous looking deep friedness font, I took a second to do a little Google image search on this and, uh, yeah:
Deep fried carrot slices apparently.
Apple Fritters deep frying.
I mean, I’ll be honest, those things look absolutely disgusting, but I would of course still eat them. Fried food is like watching a train wreck. You know no good will come of it, but you just can’t look away.
But single serve!! This way, you won’t end up with 80,000 apple fritters that you justify eating all in one sitting because you don’t want them to go to waste. Just call me Sir Stephen (Deep) Fry, here to save the day (OK, Stephen Fry has not actually been knighted, but apparently there’s a petition online trying to make that happen, which I wholeheartedly support).
Anywho, final point here is how easy this is to do. I happen to have a super mini cast iron skillet which worked perfectly for this purpose (I’m not going to lie, half the reason for me doing this deep frying business is because I find this miniature cast iron skillet so adorable that I try and use it whenever I can because it makes me do this every time (except substitute “purple drapes” for “cast iron skillet”):
Now I know what you’re really waiting on with baited breath to hear. Was this a success? Yes, yes it was. Kevin’s favourite things were the chocolate and the chocolate covered almond. My favourite (despite the fact that the cashier at the Bulk Store literally said to me when I told here what I was using the Fuzzy Peaches for “that sounds like it would be terrible”) were the Fuzzy Peaches. Crispy, sweet, slightly (fake) fruity. Swoon! (Take THAT Bulk Store teenager. Shows what you know. *Amber makes obnoxious smug self-satisfied face like the jerk that she is*).
And if you do accidentally try something that you don’t like, just remember, if at first you don’t succeed, fry, fry again (and also, invite me over 😉 ).
Yield: Up to You
Ingredients
- 1/4 teaspoon corn starch
- 1/3 cup non-dairy milk
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/4 cup flour
- pinch of salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- various vegan chocolates or candies or dried fruit
- vegetable or peanut oil
- icing sugar for dusting (optional)
Directions
- Place candies in the freezer for at least 10 minutes (ideally an hour or longer though) before starting.
- Pour about an inch of oil into a small cast iron skillet (or just use a deep fryer of course if you own one). Allow oil to heat up to about 360F.
- While oil is heating, in a small bowl whisk together corn starch, non-dairy milk, and sugar. Stir in the flour, salt and baking powder.
- Have a paper-towel covered plate handy to place deep fried candy/chocolate etc. on once it’s done – it’ll cook very fast.
- Remove candy/chocolate from the freezer. Doing only one at a time, dip candy in batter and carefully place in oil. Fry on each side for 30-60 seconds or until golden brown. Remove from oil with a slotted spoon and place on paper towel covered plate. Dab off excess oil and dust with icing sugar if desired. Continue until all your candies are done.
- Consume immediately 🙂 .
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