Corn dogs, beignets, and vodka

Ever since I started exercising and going on a calorie-reduced, pseudo-diet... I haven't cooked anything. It's the fact that everything I cook tends to be on the unhealthy side. I miss cooking/experimenting sometimes and if I get inspired, I'm doing it. During our last trip to Austin, we ate some awesome corn dogs at Pluckers of all places so I decided to look up corn dog recipes.

The two that I found both had close to a 5-star rating. I compared the two recipes and they were practically identical, except one used buttermilk and baking soda vs regular milk and more baking powder, so I opted for the one without buttermilk (since I didn't want to buy any just for this).

1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. corn meal
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
[combine]

1/4 c. milk
1 egg
[combine to above dry ingredients]
[pour batter to tall glass for ease of dipping/coating hot dogs]
[poke a stick through each hot dog and dust with flour to help batter stick]
[dip and fry into hot oil (365F) until golden brown]

Note: yields 4-5 corn dogs

The corn dogs looked good, but it ends there. I felt like it was lacking some kind of seasoning. The outside layer was really thin, although the batter had no problems sticking to the hot dog. How do carnivals get that thick corny outside? The taste was just not good. Maybe it was due to using old ingredients that have been sitting in the pantry for a questionable amount of time. Maybe my conversions were wrong since the original recipes yielded 20 corn dogs. I don't know but I'm guessing it's a "me problem", not necessarily the fault of the recipe.

Corn dogs
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆


For dessert, I made some beignets. I forget where or how I got this recipe but it's a winner.




1 c. warm milk
1 pkt yeast
[dissolve and let stand for 5 mins]

1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 stick melted butter
[combine to above]

3 c. flour
[add and mix on dough hook for 5 mins]
[cover and let dough rise for 1 hr]
[flatten dough, cut into squares]
[fry in 350 F peanut oil until golden brown and flip to cover other side]
[dust with powdered sugar]

It's been awhile since I last made them so I don't remember if there were any issues then but this batch of dough was really sticky. To remedy that, I added a little more flour until it was easy to roll without sticking.

Beignets
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆


Random but I decided to make my own flavored vodka. I bought some Jolly Ranchers and added them to my vodka. I added five pieces of cherry to roughly 200 mL of vodka, which is probably overkill but I wanted to be sure it tasted like cherry vodka. Leave it overnight to dissolve and voila, you now have flavored vodka. It smelled like Robitussin. The initial taste is good and then you get that burn. This is probably best used as a mixer and not drinking straight up on the rocks, unless you're that hardcore.