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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, April 19, 2006

TASTE
Twinkie, Twinkie, little star of kitchen

 •  On the sweet course

By Renee Enna
Chicago Tribune

"Joy of Cooking," move over. There's a new book in town.

OK, so maybe "The Twinkies Cookbook" (Ten Speed, $12.95) won't be replacing the culinary classic for anyone but die-hard fans of that ubiquitous Hostess treat.

On the other hand, last time we checked "Joy," we couldn't find any recipes for Twinkie petits fours, Twinkie ice cream or a two-layer, fondant-decked Twinkie wedding cake.

On still another hand, Chapter 9 scared us. It's titled "Twinkies and Meat."

The book, subtitled "An Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection" is a community cookbook of sorts — given that the community in question channels its culinary efforts toward cellophane-wrapped "Golden Sponge Cakes with Creamy Filling."

Upon Twinkie's 75th anniversary last year, Hostess issued a call for recipes and the response was enthusiastic. When you receive dishes like Twinkie-Misu (from Zephir Plume of Boulder, Colo.) and Twinkie Grasshopper (from Lori Kimble of Mascoutah, Ill.), you realize there's a market for this sort of thing.

We made Twinkie dessert burritos, a recipe from Peter Sheridan of Washington, D.C.: Warm a flour tortilla, cover it in chocolate sauce, add a Twinkie and fruit preserves, then wrap it tightly and ... bon appetwinkie! (Actually, Sheridan prefers fresh sliced strawberries, but we didn't want to compromise the dish with out-of-season fruit.)

Hey, they took out the trans fats. That's something, isn't it?