Fried Butter, Y'all!

Friends, I've seen something curious going on around the Facebook lately.  People have been posting pictures and recipes for food like they're gonna start charging to do so starting Monday.  You know, there's been a whole big flurry of it going on, and it's made me sit up and take notice.

There's the 3-2-1 Mug Cake recipe, where you mix a box of dry angel food cake mix with a box of regular cake mix, any flavor you want, and then you put three tablespoons of the cake mix and two tablespoons of water into a mug- you'll wanna err on the side of a bigger mug, not a dainty one, and then you stick it in the microwave for a minute. 

Friends! Did you know you can fry butter?!

Vava- that's my name that I call my Mommy (And I'm gonna be referring her as such for now, because that's my name for her!)- Vava's made that one.  We sort of like it, for cake in a pinch.  It's funny, the first time she made it, we thought the cake in the mug looked like one of those sponges you wet and use to wet the licky part of an envelope.  The cake itself wasn't that bad!

There've been other recipes going around the Facebook like wildfire, though.  Recipes that are far less benign than cake in a mug from the microwave oven.  Why, I saw one for something called "Crack Sticks," which I thought were something completely other than what they turned out to be.  I just won't go there.  But what the Crack Sticks ended up being were slices of white bread, with the crusts off, and rolled with a rolling pin until they're flat, and then cream cheese spread on 'em, rolled up like a jelly roll, dipped in melted butter, coated in cinnamon and sugar, and then baked. 

Hey! Vava! Can we make some fried butter?

Crack Sticks, indeed.  They certainly don't sound very healthy, but they certainly sound delicious!  I love all those things that they're made out of!

I asked Vava if we could make those, and she hid the item from our newsfeed and told me to forget I'd ever seen it.  I said there was a fat chance of that happening, and then do you know what Vava said to me?  She said if we made those Crack Sticks and ate 'em, chances wouldn't be the only fat things flying around here!

How. About. That?!

Well, it made me all curious, anyway, so I swiped the iPad during my nap and did some snooping around the World Wide Web all on my own, and you know what I found out?  I found out there's a WORLD of decadence on the World Wide Web.  If you can dream it, the Internet has a recipe for it. 

Oh, you just joined the Weight Watchers? That's your problem!

The recipe group I found myself unable to look away from is the fried food group.  It's fascinating to me what people will dip in batter and throw into a fryer.  Why, there are how-to's on making fried pickles, both dill and sweet, fried Twinkies (they're comin' back soon!), fried Oreo cookies, fried candy bars, FRIED COCA-COLA!, and ... wait for it...

FRIED BUTTER!!!

What the watermelon?!  Fried butter?  How is that even possible?!

Well, there's two different ways to go about the fried butter, as it turns out.   Snooping around on the iPad, I found out that you can either fry up sweet butter or savory butter.  It's all in the batter.

I thought it was interesting that Paula Deen is in the savory camp.  I woulda thought that she'd be all about flinging butter and sugar and maybe some syrup into a fryer, y'all, but as it turns out, she makes little balls with butter, dips them into a savory batter, and fries them up, and to me, they look like they'd be a buttery hush puppy.  Mmm! I suppose!

But you know me, Friends.  I caught the sweet tooth from Vava.  I just can't help myself.  I appreciate savory, but I love the sweet.

Fine. I don't need the fried butter. I'll dream of a Cupcake-inator!

And here's the deal.  The sweet version is all honey and cinnamon and sweetness in the thick, thick batter, and you take a whole or half stick of butter, depending on when you wanna have your heart attack, and get it good and cold, super-cold, and shove a holding stick into it, coat it really good with your sweet, sweet batter, and then put it in the fryer. 

The commenters said it's like sendin' your tastebuds on a trip to heaven with a side-trip to paradise! 

I guess that's one way of putting it, anyway!

So I asked Vava if we could make some Fried Butter, both the sweet and the savory, and she got all snoopy about how did I ever find out about Fried Butter and all its variations, and I came clean about the iPad.  And you know how I was rewarded for my honesty and my integrity?  Do you?  Now the Internet is password-protected!  I can't even get onto the thing without Mommy.  What an outrage!

Awwww, it's all good, anyway, Friends, even if I need parental supervision for the Internet.  It's all good, because Fried Butter's probably really great and all, but I still hold fondly to my dream of one day making a Cupcake-inator!