Fried Candy Bars, Batter fried Chocolate Cheese, and Funnel Cake!

While editing my post for fried cheese curds inspiration struck! I remembered my absolute favorite fair  food: deep fried candy bars. I have been meaning to try them at home for quite some time now, and we just happen to have some left over Halloween candy. But that wasn't the only thing I thought to fry. On my last trip up to WI I bought some chocolate cheese from The Cheese Chalet. (They ship nation wide so you too can get this addictive chocolaty creation, which tastes exactly like fudge.)

As I usually do for most kitchen experiments, I enlisted Tim's help.
Our first task was to find a suitable funnel cake batter to dip our goodies in before frying. After a google search I quickly found one belonging to Alton Brown, my favorite chef from Food Network. So it was a no brainier that this was the funnel cake recipe to try.

Ingredients:

1 cup water

3/4 stick butter (6 tablespoons)

1 tablespoon sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup flour

1 cup eggs, about 4 large eggs and 2 whites

Vegetable oil, for frying

Powdered sugar, for topping

First freeze the candy bars and the cheese (cut in cubes) for at least 2 hours.

Boil water, butter, sugar, and salt together in a saucepan. 

 Add flour and work it in until it is all incorporated and dough forms a ball. 

Transfer mixture to the bowl of a standing mixer and let cool for 3 to 4 minutes. 

With mixer lowest speed, add eggs, 1 at a time, making sure the first egg is completely incorporated before continuing. 

Now this weird beater attachment didn't really seem to be doing the trick, 

so I switched to a whisk attachment.

There. A nice smooth thick batter.

We decided to experiment with a blob of batter to see how long it would take to cook. 

Approximately 3-4 minutes. 

Timing is important because you want to cook the batter,
but not melt they candy bar everywhere.

Our first candy bar we tried to get an even coat of batter, 

so that no chocolate was exposed to the hot oil.

It seemed like it may have been a bit thin in some spots and a little chocolate escaped.

The next ones we double dipped and got a much thicker layer of batter and all the chocolate stayed in this time

Next the chocolate cheese...

It came out great on the first try.

 Now, what to do with all that left over batter? 

Alton Brown's recipe was for actual funnel cake,
and it told you to put the batter in a piping bag. 

Now when I made Bubba's birthday cake,
I found that a ziplock bag with a corner cut off works just as well.
So we tried it again for the batter.

First fill the bag.

Squeeze it all to the botom corner and then cut the corner off.

Unlike with icing, the batter comes out of the bag immediately after you cut it, 

so hold the bag over the hot oil.

Squeeze out the batter in a circular motion.

As you add more it will stick together and look more "basket-y" like funnel cake does.

 Take out of the fryer once golden brown.

  

And sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Here are the deep fried candy bars:

And the fried chocolate cheese:

Bubba was a little out of sorts when he woke up from nap today.

But some funnel cake for snack cheered him right up!