It sounds like a joke: deep-fried butter, but it's for sale at the Iowa State Fair and it's not a joke to Presidential contenders who are visiting the fair this week in hopes of raising their chances of doing well in the Republican straw poll. Sarah Palin even promised to try a stick in an e-mail to supporters: 'I'm excited to try some of that famous fried butter-on-a-stick, fried cheesecake-on-a-stick, fried Twinkies, etc.'
The fat-laden "treat" was developed by Larry Fyfe in honor of the 100th birthday of the fair's butter cow--a sculpture of a cow carved from butter. Competing with 50 other foods available on a stick, many of them deep-fried such as Twinkies® and Snickers® bars, butter on a stick is different.
The recipe is simple: take a two ounce stick of butter (a regular stick of butter is four ounces, so this is half a stick), dip it into a batter with lots of cinnamon and honey. Deep fry it for three minutes and pour a glaze over it (in case it's not sweet enough). Then dig in!
What you won't find is an intact stick of butter, ala Baked Alaska. The heat of the deep fat frying melts the butter into the batter, giving a buttery batter taste. Those with the courage--and low cholesterol--to try the treat say that it tastes like a buttered cinnamon roll or French Toast.
They also say that it's a messy treat as the butter has a tendency to run out when first bitten into.
And for a mere four dollars, fairgoers can find out if better butter makes better batter when deep fried.
