Opinions differ on fried candy

Take a moment. Sit down. Go to a happy place in your mind.

Try to think of the most decadent, fattening, sugary food one could possibly concoct and consume. The sky's the limit. For instance, I am thinking about squeezing wedding cake icing straight into my mouth.

But even that may not be as fattening and sugary as an actual food that can be purchased in Cape this very day.

It's a fried candy bar on a stick.

That's probably old news for some of you who have been abuzz with information about fried candy bars since they were introduced at the Illinois State Fair last month. The fact that news of a fried candy bar spread to Cape Girardeau before The Associated Press could produce a story on it is a testament to how seriously we take eating around here.

By now, many people know how to find the candy bars in Cape Girardeau: Take the Rodney Street entrance into the SEMO District Fair and take your first left. The stand is on your left and also sells ... gulp ... chicken livers.

Luckily, they are using different grease for the candy bars and the livers.

By 8 p.m. Tuesday -- after not even four full nights of operation -- the stand had sold 960 bars at $2 each.

Of course, being at the center of fattening food consumption news in Southeast Missouri for some time now, I was well aware of the invention of the fried candy bar. So I went to the fair Tuesday with The Other Half and a couple of friends -- fellow fattening food aficionados. We split a fried 3 Musketeers, which was a stupid, stupid idea that resulted in a third-degree burn on my right thumb and index finger and chocolate everywhere else.

The opinions?

Mike: "It's like a warm eclair. It reminds me of how chocolate chip cookies come out of the oven all warm."

Gabe: "I didn't like it. It was cold on the inside and warm on the outside."

The Other Half: "It wasn't anything special. It definitely did not live up to the hype. I was expecting to collapse on the ground in ecstasy."

Hey, sometimes after seven years of marriage, a fried candy bar is the only thing you can hope will do that for you.

On a related note, Dan and Nancy Johnson of Jackson, Mo., were splitting a candy bar after 24 years of marriage, enjoying a new experience together. They wisely sat down and used forks, thus avoiding the burns.

The Johnsons followed a friend's advice to get one despite Dan's concerns.

"Anything on a stick at a fair is suspect," he said. "You know it's going to be high cholesterol and possibly a colon cleanser."

But by the end, they were practically wrestling the candy bar out of each other's hands.

No need to fight, though. There are plenty for the rest of the week, stand owner Jack Huff of Herrin, Ill., assures.

He found out about the culinary delight through the Illinois State Fair and started figuring out how to make a batter than would be thick enough to stay stuck to the candy bar but thin enough to cook before the frozen candy bar inside completely melted.

He and his fellow chefs ended up with something a lot like funnel cake batter.

Now this next part Huff did not want you to know, but a good journalist would not disappoint her readers by omitting details.

The candy bars are fried for about two minutes.

Of course, you also can find this out by ordering one and standing there for two minutes while it is fried, watching the process through the window.

I liked my fried candy bar. Not so much that I'd ever buy another one, because the guilt almost killed me, never mind the grease.

But if Huff is making a small fortune off his secret recipe, maybe I could come up with some impossibly fattening food and start selling it at fairs.

How about ... fried icing?

Heidi Hall is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.