Made with funnel cake mix, egg, water, and canola oil.

Jumpin’ Jehosaphat!  What in heaven’s name is this supposed to be?!  It’s supposed to be some concoction of a funnel cake—that’s what.

I was thoroughly disappointed.  It was just so hard for me to make the swirly things in the oil and have it look nice.  None of my attempts looked anything remotely like the funnel cakes you’d get at a carnival.

As I’m attempting to make the third one of these waiting for it to get a nice medium brown, I was standing there thinking to myself—“Hmmm, I wonder where the name funnel cake came from?”  HOT DOG!  Talk about a light bulb moment.

My 2nd attempt looks just as pathetic.

My tiny sieve for sifting the powdered sugar onto the cake.

Well, it TASTED like a funnel cake.

There at that moment, while yet another attempt is frying in the oil, it dawned on me—ohhhhhh, that’s why they use a funnel.  So this whole time I was reading the directions on the box I didn’t think it was that big of a deal to pour it from the mixing bowl into the oil instead of through a funnel.  I mean, there was a little indent on the edge of the bowl for pouring so I thought let’s make life easy.  No such luck.  Plus I didn’t own a funnel anyway.

I was so frustrated at my attempts at this, that I didn’t even try at all with this last one and made it in pancake form by just dumping the last of the batter straight into the oil—no swirly movements, nothing.  At least it did taste like a funnel cake.  And that’s that, folks!

Needless to say, I’ll never get a job as a funnel cake maker with a traveling carnival.

Recipe for—Funnel Cake

So, if you have nothing else to do today, attempt to make your own homemade funnel cakes—but make sure you have a funnel first and give it as good a go as you possibly can.

Take-Away Life Lesson:  Actually read the title of a boxed recipe you want to make and wait for the meaning to sink into your head before attempting to cook or bake anything.