by Ginger Voight

Created on: April 12, 2009   Last Updated: January 23, 2012

It's September and the annual fair has come to town. The kids are anxious to ride the carnival rides, and in my neck of the woods people are ready to see the new livestock and rodeo.  But for my family of foodies it's all about the treats and eats. There's the usual menu of corn dogs, kettle corn and cotton candy, but every year there's always that one new item on the menu that makes one stop and say, "What?"

Most recently for us that happened to be fried Coke. This newest Fair food fare was introduced at the State Fair of Texas - birthplace of the corn dog- by creator Abel Gonzales, Jr. in 2006. It also won a creativity honor at the Big Tex Awards Contest, losing only to what else?  Deep fried pralines.

In the south we're likely to fry anything, from Twinkies to Snickers to our Thanksgiving turkeys. But Coke? How was that even possible?

The trick, we learned, was to put the flavor of Coke into something one could easily, and typically does, deep fry, in this case it was a donut. Pouring Coke syrup into the donut batter enabled this particular snack stand to use "Deep Fried Coke" as a claim to fame and draw curious (and hungry) revelers right to their window. You have to give them mad props. It's low budget marketing genius you can eat!

The final product is served complete with Coke syrup drizzled on top, cinnamon, sugar and a cherry... not unlike another popular Fair favorite, the Funnel Cake.

If you're like us, though, you like to balance out your extreme sugar rush with something a little more savory. A favorite of my husband is a heaping order of ribbon fries. These curvy delights are wider and flatter than the typical curly fry, and therefore you get a better taste of savory potato despite the deep frying process. It's made as a perennial fair favorite with nothing more than some potatoes, a slicer and a frying vat.

While my less adventurous, but meat loving, hubby would like to combine the fries with something a little more typical like a big, honking turkey leg I prefer to take a walk on the wild side with hot and spicy cheese, battered and deep fried and served on a stick, not unlike most things served at the fair.

We always wash that down with some fresh squeezed lemonade, and have been known to go to the fair solely for these frozen, slushy tastes of lemony heaven. The lemonade, like the ribbon fries, teaches out to maximize profits by the simple motto, "Less is more".

None of these guilty little pleasures are diet friendly though, so it's probably a good thing the fair only comes around once a year. So get on that treadmill now... it'll be September again before you know it.

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