Just Gilding the Twinkie

FM Staff

Have a hankering for Twinkie Petit-Fours? How about a Twinkie Milkshake? Well, your ship has come in at last. Fresh off the presses is the new Twinkies Cookbook, a collection of recipes submitted by fans of the famous snack cake.

Lending credence to the notion that Twinkie Nation veers into some strange byways, the book catalogs a diverse set of pathologies. They range from 60s attachment syndrome (Twinkie Jell-O Dessert) and terminal childhood attachment disorder (a Twinkie Wedding Cake, Peanut Butter & Jelly Twinkie Cake) to a rather off-kilter sense of humor (Twinkie Sushi) and an obsession with tubular meat products poked into cream-filled orefices (Pigs in a Twinkie—sausage links inserted into the center of the Twinkie) that sounds like something Freud might have imagined if he were a pastry chef.

Granted, most of the recipes are desserts or snacks in which the Twinkie is an ingredient among fairly complementary accompaniments. There's a Twinkie Banana Split, Pumpkin-Twinkie Bread Pudding and a Twinkie Dessert Burrito.

But the chapter on "Twinkies and Meat" is, frankly, disturbing. What to make of Chicken-Raspberry Twinkie Salad, except as a hangover cure? And more to the point, what to make of anyone who would offer it for publication to the world?