I have seen fried ice cream, twinkies, and even snickers, but coke

 

How to make Coke better? Fry it
It must be time again for the N.C. State Fair
MARK JOHNSON
mjohnson@charlotteobserver.com


Fried Coca-Cola is one of the offerings at the N.C. State Fair.

RALEIGH - It has come to this at the N.C. State Fair: Deep fried Coca-Cola.

Each year, some carnival culinary innovator with a flair for foods bound to lead to congestive heart failure offers a new foodstuff bathed in gooey dough and dropped in a vat of boiling vegetable oil.

Past fairs have seen candy bars, Twinkies, Moonpies, Oreos, cheeseburgers, sweet potatoes and even green beans fried up and, in most cases, impaled on a stick. South Carolina's state fair even added crispy Ho-hos.

Perhaps the concession operators, these Emerils of the french fry basket, simply ran out of solid foods.

The solution? Mix funnel-cake batter with Coke instead of water. Pour batter into the fryer and cook up a mass of doughy strands. Stuff into a Coca Cola cup, sprinkle with powdered sugar and douse with pure Coke syrup. Top it with whipped cream and a cherry.

"Anything's good when you deep fry it," said Greg Seamster, of the N.C. fair's concession staff, as he served up the Cokes at a fair preview Tuesday.

Seamster's words caught the ear of Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison, perhaps wondering if the fat-and-sugar ****tail qualified as a controlled substance: "I heard him say it would give you a `Zing.' "

Mark Parker, an afternoon radio host, indulged with mental images of doctors using tiny balloons to reopen his arteries.

"Do you sell it," Parker asked, "with a little angioplasty on the side?"