Hostess
cupcakes and Twinkies. When one thinks of classic junk food snacks, these
two delicious chemically engineered treats are sure to pop-up on the list.
After seeing them advertised in countless superhero comics back when we
were wee lads (sometimes even being part of the actual comic storylines) it was
damned near impossible for us kids to resist the temptation to eat 'em up.
I mean, for crissakes... Batman ate
Twinkies, so how the hell could we not do the
same?
Now that the
new millennium has arrived, we're supposed to be getting all sorts of
things that they talked about in science fiction tales back in the day,
right?
Flying cars, laser guns, flashlights that were turned into twisted sex toys
because the bulb was replaced with a plastic vagina, and last but not
least... the
ability to make our very own Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies.
I damn near
shot out a load of my own special crème filling when I saw this box at my
local K.B. toy store. For a mere 10 bux, I would be able to create my own
Hostess treats for the rest of my life without ever having to leave the
comfort of my own home. Too good to be true? Probably. But I wasn't going
to let that stop me from at least giving the thing a shot. Besides, the
oven itself was shaped like a giant friggin' cupcake! How could you go
wrong with that?
Now before
we begin, let's take a quick look at an important warning:
DO NOT
IMMERSE OVEN IN WATER AT ANY TIME. That's some sound advice if I've
ever seen it. Why, that advice ranks right up there with "DO NOT SET THE
HOUSE ON FIRE", "DO NOT MURDER PEOPLE", "DO NOT EAT LIVE ELECTRIC EELS",
and "DO NOT TAUNT THE LIONS BY REPEATEDLY BY THRUSTING YOUR GENITALS IN
THEIR GENERAL DIRECTION WHILE SHOUTING 'COME SEE THE REAL EYE OF THE
TIGER, BITCHES!' AT THEM." Thank you Hostess, without your words of
wisdom, we'd all be doomed.
Now that
we're well educated on proper giant-cupcake oven maintenance, we can get
to the good stuff. As you can see, there aren't a whole lot of accessories
with this particular bake set. While some of the other sets I've featured
in the past came with all sorts of goodies, this Hostess one is pretty much a bare
bones deal. You get the oven, the Cupcake and Twinkie pans, a plastic
swirly mold for the cupcakes, the cake and
frosting mix packets, and the spatula. We had to buy a 100-watt light bulb
for it too, but were disappointed to find that the Hostess logo didn't
light up in the front when you plugged it in. So it definitely doesn't
compare to the ol'
Queasy-Bake Oven as far as glowing aesthetics are concerned.
Another
thing that caused us to raise an eyebrow was the fact that the pans looked
significantly smaller than the Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies that we
remembered. So, we ran across the street to 7-Eleven and bought one pack
of each for comparison. Ok, we were actually just hungry as hell and
wanted to eat 'em, but damnit, I swear this was for scientific
experimentation too! As you can clearly see in the photographs above,
these pans were nowhere near the size of the store-bought Cupcakes and
Twinkies. The Twinkies were definitely a bit smaller, but the Cupcakes
were what really surprised us. I mean just look at that shit. I'm sorry,
but that pan isn't going to produce a real Hostess cupcake, it's going to produce a
tiny morsel roughly the size of a mouse turd.
Another
problem we noticed before we even began to make our treats was that
Hostess fucked up big-time with the packaging. They forgot to include the
chocolate cupcake mix and instead gave us TWO "Yellow Cake" mixes instead.
SON OF A BITCH! So yeah, it appeared we would have to make due with
what we had and bake a vanilla-flavored cupcake instead. Looking back on
it now, I'm guessing that this fuckup was intentional. Yep, they conveniently
sell chocolate cupcake mix refill packs for $6.95. What a steal!
We decided
to start off by making the Twinkie first, so we poured in the miniscule
amount of water required to turn the cake mix into something that
resembled what a cat would yack up. Let me tell you, this stuff was sticky
as hell. If you were running low on cement, you could easily hold some
bricks together with this shit. I'm sure it'd stick to the walls of your
stomach for years to come. The Hostess Snack Oven - it's the gift that
keeps on giving.
After
spending a couple minutes of forcing the damned Twinkie mix off of the
spoon and into the pan, we were finally ready to shove it into the oven
and let it cook. The spatula they provided was actually pretty cool because it has
a clamp which grasps the edge of the tray. In other words, it would be a
lot easier to get this tray out of the oven once the Twinkies were cooked.
That's usually not the case with these toy oven deals.
With great
excitement we said goodbye to our Twinkie pal as it went into the cupcake
oven to cook for 12 minutes. You really have to wonder about the health
ramifications of a food product that can be cooked completely in 12
minutes by a mere light bulb. Eh, I grew up eating Boo Berry to start off
the day... nothing can kill me!
While the
Twinkie was baking, we started making the cream filling mix and goddamn there
was a shitload of it! They provide you with waaaaay too much sugary creme
filling mix. It's supposed to be enough for both the Twinkie and the
Cupcake, but the amount they provide you with could easily fill up your
intestines faster that a barium enema. So what does one do when faced with
the global crisis known as "extra creme filling mix"? It's quite simple...
you snort it for a sugary high.
Scarface
doesn't have shit on us. My pal Andrew did a huge line of the creme-filling
mix. In all honesty, I think he could've finished all 3 lines without
flinching once. Wanting to be a macho-man myself, I began to snort a line
of the creme-filling mix as well. Within seconds I felt as though my head
was going to explode and then I blacked out for about 5 minutes. When I
awoke, my pants were missing and the handle-end of the spatula had somehow
made its way into my ass. Andrew claimed to have nothing to do with it,
but I'm not sure I believe him. Last time I checked, there weren't any
spatula-wielding Hostess gremlins running around my fucking house looking
for an opportunity to rape.
Moving right
along, we made the cream filling mix and it did NOT look appetizing. Not
in the least. It sure as hell didn't look like the delicious fluffy cream
filling you'd find inside a real Hostess Cupcake or Twinkie. It did,
however, look like monkey spunk. And I'll be damned if the normal
store-bought Hostess treats contain monkey spunk. Well, they might, but at
least it's tasty monkey spunk.
Sure enough,
the spatula with the built-in grip worked great when it came to removing
the Twinkie pan from the cupcake oven. Unfortunately, my excitement was
cut short when I realized that it didn't look much like a Twinkie at all.
Not only
were they fairly torn-up on top, but they were burnt on the bottom! How
the hell does the food on the bottom of the pan get burnt by a
friggin' light bulb!? And in case you were wondering, no the
Twinkie didn't expand to normal Twinkie size after being cooked. It was
still way smaller and less appetizing than a real Twinkie. But that's not
the worst part.
Fact.
Twinkies do not come in two separate parts. Sad Fact. The Twinkies that
Hostess provides you with in this kit do. Yep, you're expected to take the
monkey spu... er... icing and spread it on the Twinkie as if it's some
kind of mutated peanut butter sammich. Uh no. Twinkies do not come in two
parts and the cream filling is not spread onto them, it's
injected! That's right, what they should've done is provided us with a
mold for one solid Twinkie and a syringe to inject the cream filling into
it with. So far the Twinkie is aesthetically inaccurate and unappealing.
But would it at least taste like a Twinkie?
No. Wait,
let me rephrase that. FUCK NO. First off, I couldn't even taste the
cream filling. You'd think that with the amount of cream filling we put on
it, you'd at least be able to taste it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it
wouldn't have tasted good anyway, so it's probably for the best that I
didn't taste it. And then there was the Twinkie cake itself. It was like
eating some horrible mixture of cake, sand, and glue. My mouth was dry as
hell for an hour after eating it. I think I drank half a carton of orange
juice to dry to return some meager form of moisture to my mouth.
Pseudo-Twinkies 1. RoG 0.
At this
point we didn't have much to look forward to. I mean, according to the
instructions we had all of the necessary ingredients to make a
near-perfect Twinkie reproduction and it turned out like crap. For the
Hostess Cupcake we didn't even have the chocolate cake mix, so how good
could it turn out? We made the icing for the swirls that would go on top
of the Cupcake and put them in the swirly mold and then left them in the
freezer. We could already tell there was no way in hell it was going to
work, but we played along anyway. More on how that turned out in a bit.
So we made
the Cupcake mix by using the one vanilla cake packet that we had left. Now
according to the instructions you're supposed to be able to pour
the mix into the Cupcake pan. Haha what a joke. Take a look:
Not even the
Hulk could shake this stuff out of the mixing bowl, we had to pry it out
with the spoon. And don't give me that whole "well it's because you used
the vanilla cake mix instead of the chocolate cake mix" spiel. Other than
the taste, there's not much difference between vanilla and chocolate cake.
Maybe, just maybe it won't pour because you're supposed to basically use 2
drops of water for an entire packet of cake mix. No wonder the Twinkie
tasted so godamned dry. And the chocolate frosting is no different
either...
A half
teaspoon of water to make that chocolate icing. I'm amazed that it was
able to more or less mix it all completely. Still, that doesn't change the
fact that it looked absolutely unappetizing. We were both in total
agreement that it looked like dog shit. The resemblance was uncanny.
Well the 12
minutes passed and it was time to remove the Cupcake from the oven.
Surprisingly, the Cupcake appeared to cook a little better than the
Twinkie did.
There
weren't even any burn marks on the Cupcake, so at least there was some
shread of hope with the thing. Well, not really... but we had to lie to
ourselves to keep our spirits up. So the icing and frosting was applied to
the Cupcake, and I have to say... it looked more like a muffin that had
been ravaged by the black plague than a Cupcake.
Oh well, at
least we'd be able to put the candied icing swirl on top of it, right?
Wrong. Just as we had predicted, it was impossible to remove the icing
from the miniscule swirly mold. I tried bending it every which way, but
this candied swirl was nothing of the kind. Even when I tried
digging my fingers into it to give the thing a start, it just became
complete mush. So we decided to scrap the candied swirl and just get the
pain over with.
So there you
have it, one genuine homemade Hostess Cupcake. Well, I already ate the
nasty Twinkie and mouth was still dry as a desert, so it was Andrew's turn
to step up the plate and face the demon.
SCRUMDIDLEYUMPTIOUS!
As you can
see by the expression on his face, Andrew absolutely LOVED the
Cupcake. Oh yeah, just look at the excitement in his eyes. They're just
lit up with the joys of eating a rich, succulent homemade Hostess cupcake.
Why, I'm sure at this very moment he's sitting at home, twitching in a
maddening rage due to an undying craving for just one more bite of
those delicious cupcake sweets.
As you may
or may not know, it's tradition that somebody always has to lick the
spoon. It's one of those things that this country was founded on. To not
have somebody lick the spoon would be to piss on the very foundations of
our society. Worlds would collapse of someone didn't lick the spoon, ok?
Unfortunately, anytime I do one of these food trials, nobody else wants to
lick the spoon, so I'm always the one who gets stuck with the task.
So in the
end, how do the homemade versions compare to the store-bought ones?
From the two of us:
THANKS HOSTESS, THANKS A LOT.
If you
really want your kids to feel like the failures they are, just buy them
this Hostess Snack Oven. If they don't get completely upset on their own,
just yell at them when they produce their very own hideous
mutations of Twinkies and Cupcakes. They'll be scarred for life in an
instant. Is it worth buying the oven for $10 just so you can have "fun"
making these treats? No, not really. Not unless your idea of "fun" is
simultaneously experiencing drymouth and nausea. Stick with paying under a
buck for a pack of Hostess Cupcakes or Twinkies, they might not be good
for you, but neither is wasting 10 bux.
the end.
-RoG-
Want to see some more crappy
bake sets? Good. Check these out:
THE QUEASY-BAKE COOKERATOR OVEN!
THE THINGMAKER CHILL-A-TRON LAB!
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