Poll: Which of the following carny/festival/fair snack foods is your favorite

Although I've made way more funnel cakes than I've ever eaten.

mmm...funnel cake is the bomb.

See...the only fair-type thing I tend to go to is the Big E (Eastern States Expo). And that's all about the Maine baked potatoes. And the mini donuts. And the Finnish pancakes. And apple pie. And pretty much more food than I normally consume all year. :)

and the clam fritters, y0!

No fried dough?

(which is NOT funnel cake)

Fried dough is totally not funnel cake. I only put them in the same option-line because I've never seen them both offered at the same fair/carnival/festival/whathaveyou.

Generally I favor funnel cake over fried dough, although a fresh cheese or maple Beaver Tail and a steaming cup of cocoa is the ultimate ice-skating snack. :)

I didn't know there was a difference between funnel cake and fried dough until I went to a stand at Six Flags Darien Lake that sold both. Either that, or it was at the Lilac Festival in Rochester. Fried dough does not exist in south-east PA, only funnel cake. Either way, OMG teh yumminess.

I voted for Kettle Corn since I base my opinion of others on their feelings towards it. Which I'm guessing was part of LORi's inspiration for this poll.

My real favorites are the chocolate bars and drinks at the chocolate stand at FRFF and Clearwater. Ribbon fries are right up there too.

yaaaay kettle corn!
but you have to eat it all the same day or it gets kind of sticky and gross. (usually, however, this is not a problem.)

Yep, that was one of my inspirations (along with filling Josh's poll quota).

I was one of the two (at the moment) who voted for caramel corn, but I also adore the sweet-potato fries stand at FRFF. And fresh donuts, when they're available, are oh my god yessss good yummmm.

although Elephant Ears are a bit closer to the truth.

I'm also quite fond of giant turkey legs, but I think that's the fantasy geek in me talking ;-)

But the best fair food is the butter cows. It's a little tricky to get past security, but once do you're only feet away from a buttery mouthful of sculpted bovine.
Erm, right.

Ok. You might officially scare me more than the butter wright-brothers did.

;-)

Well, I did.
But the real favorite is probably fair fries, drowning in vinegar. Or Ribbon Fries drowning in vinegar.

Although, Funnel Cake is an absolute must, always stop and get some on my way out if I didn't get some before then, kind of thing.

Of course, two of my favorites are semi-local things. Double Decker Burgers (which must come from the Double Decker Burger stand and nowhere else) at both the county fair and the Apple Fest.

And then there's the best Apple Dumplings in the Whole Universe... which don't ever happen anymore, because the township trustees that did them stopped doing them, and no one seems to have the recipie. Le Sigh.

i htink you'd have to be from bc to understand this one.

the PNE (pacific national exhibition) has stands that sell "Those Little Doughnuts" they are little, cinnamon and sugar covered, and you watch them being made as you buy them, so they're still hot while you consume them.

mmmm.

Oh, man. That which we call a "Teenie Weenie Donut" by any name would smell (not to mention taste) as sweet.

*so* good.

(although I voted for corn dogs/pronto pups)

*laugh* *points up at her post about the big E*

Us easterners get the love of mini donuts, they're made the same way there and I get 'em every time I go, without fail.

When I was a kid, my parents would get a dozen zeppoles every time a little street fair/festival rolled around town in Little Italy. I still get them at San Gennaro and love to drown them in powdered sugar. They are like manna from heaven.

Fried oreos, on the other hand, are nasty and disgusting.

fried oreos are surprisingly good.

but my heart belongs to taste budds chocolate bars.

I am extremely afraid of something they've had at SMAF called "Fried Twinkies".

Um. Ewwwww! :P

OMG, zeppoles are the best, i haven't had one in probably 14 years, since we moved from jearsy to maryland. in Scotch plains NJ every year on labor day weekend there was an Italian festival literaly right down the street, I could hear the people calling the auctions from our living room.

(cuz I like to choose one of the options... not take the "other" route)

because my all-time favorite is the fried cheese on a stick from Cedar Point, followed by the big Cedar Point fries (drowning in vinegar like Lacy said).

after that it's just plainly: hot dogs. i loooooooooove just the hot dogs that have been sitting on the rollers, and the bun is all hot and soft and then i add just mustard. mmm.

no cake as I have celiacs disease. and I have a corn intolerance so no popcorn/corn bread veryations. no dyes , so no candy apple. and only caremel apples if they aren't made with cornsyrup... also with the diabetes thing I don't rule out all sweets but I have to seriously watch the carb intake yo. ....

BLOOOOOOOMIN' ONION!!!

And, dude, what about deep-fried snickers?

They do bloomin' onions at fairs and stuff, now?

Lord, I haven't been to one in a long time.

...but i've always been partial to bannock. mmm, bannock.

Okay, question. The wiki entry you link to describes bannock in the Scots form -- sconelike but not-quite -- which is how I always thought of it. But when we moved to Ottawa I ran across several references to bannock (and a few recipes) that indicated an Indian frybread-type food. Do you know if this is a regional difference?

I'm assuming, since you linked to the sconelike wiki, that's the variety you consume with delight at fairs. :)

boiled or fried, either way is good with me :)

they can be boiled? like dumplings?

hmmm. i truly do learn something every day.

(the sconey ones are generally baked.)

there are many many ways to prep bannock. sometimes it's soft and doughy (i.e. boiled) and sometimes it's hard and crusty (i.e. fried). then you can serve it with different things - mild jam, heavy butter, salt, with pemmican, etc. bannock kicks ass.

but corn dogs come in at a close second. They are a recent favorite, ever since my most recent trip to Hershey Park.

can anyone set to rest, once and for all, the difference between fried dough and funnel cake? Is it just the way it's made? or is there something more?

I've personally never had funnel cake, so I don't know if there's a "difference while eating"

Well, tell me what exactly fried dough is and i might be able to answer. because this is the first time i've heard of this "fried dough" phenomenon. :P

you crazy southerners. :) But yeah, see my reply below.

basically, it's a large oval of fried... well.... dough. As opposed to what I'm seeing funnel cake as.... several interlocking streams of dough that fry and become a big "mesh" so to speak.

Fried dough vs. funnel cake.

Looks like the main difference is the yeast in fried dough that is absent in funnel cake.

actually, looks to me like there'd be MAJOR textural differences..... that looks like interlocking streams of fried dough..... made into a circle.... vs. one big sheet of tender, flaky dough that you tear pieces off of to eat.

Indeed...funnel cake is crispier and less dough-y. YUM.

it's really a different proportion of ingredients as well. funnel cake is made from a batter, not from a dough. it is liquid, like pancake batter as opposed to bread dough, and doesn't hold any shape until it hits the hot oil.

They taste completely different to me, besides their superficial differences. Fried dough is chewier...funnel cake tends to be crisper and for some reason feels oilier to me (maybe it's the extra surface area touching the oil? I dunno.) And I like that fried dough also is served as a non-sweet option with the tomato sauce and stuff. Maybe funnel cake is sometimes as well but never that I've seen.

Huh. The Wiki identifies Fried Dough as being identical to (Indian) Frybread... But every recipe I've ever seen (and used!) for frybread uses chemical leavening and not yeast.

And I'm not sure enough of the differences to change the wiki.

I was just going to post pretty much the same comment. I've made frybread, and also eaten it several times in the southwest, and it's not the same critter as fried dough.

Heh. Damn the torpedoes, I made a change to the Wiki page. :-)

go you!

Subvert The Dominant Paradigm!

:D

today at clearwater and ate lots of festival food. My first stop was Taste Budds Chocolate. I told them about this poll and that I said they were my favorite festival food.

Later in the day I went to Texas Taters and ordered ribbon friends and told them the dream I had about their fries.

Then I went back to Taste Budds to actually buy my chocolate bars. As soon as I got there the people behind the counter said, "tell him the story you told us?" and pointed to someone else at teh stand, perhaps teh owner. I told him about the poll and he got all interested and asked for the url. If he looks He'll be happy to see that Carey also praised their chocolate bars.

Later in the day I bought Kettle Corn. I had all my favorites.

this seems to describe the differences well... even if I've never heard of "elephant ears".... it looks like fried dough to me.

huh. I'm familiar with "elephant ears" that are more of a puff-pastry sort of thing, baked not fried, also known as "palmiers". I've never heard of anything like fried dough being called elephant ears before this discussion.

Regional terms for food are endlessly varying, it seems...

well, now you've just completely confused matters.
:D

i thought that was my purpose in life. :D

Okay, point granted.
;)

All my life, elephant ears were just bigger-than-normal pieces of fried dough in roughlythe shape of an elephant ear, with cinnamon and sugar.

And if I was specifically having "fried dough", it'd always be powdered sugar or tomato sauce and cheese. Never cinnamon and sugar, because that was the domain of elephant ears. :)
I HAVE seen a puff pastry like thing in curled shapes and such with cinnamon and sugar, but never called elephant ears.

Ok, that's what I thought too.
I don't think I've ever had "real" fried dough, but I figured elephant ears were in the same food group, so that's where my vote went.

I'd never heard of the "tomato sauce and cheese" thing until recently.

I always just had it with powdered sugar.... but, I can see how that might be good.

It's all about if you're in the mood for savory or sweet. Because the dough in and of itself doesn't really decide. :)

see, the tomato sauce and cheese version totally sounds like pizza-flavor to me. i should try this next time i find myself in a fried-dough-selling place. (which pretty much means "outside Pennsylvania").

well, but it's usually shaky parmesan and such, not mozzarella. :)

Yes yes, I saw them on the same line. :) My "no fried dough" was more directed at Andrea. How can you go to the Big E and NOT get fried dough?!