Since I didn't have the opportunity to go out and buy some, I decided to try my luck at making my own.
Before I began my mission, I searched for a trust-worthy recipe online. I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning having a YouTube video marathon of watching people make golden brown hush-puppies. They'd "mm" and close their eyes and chew slowly as they bit into those golden brown cakes. I went to bed confident that tomorrow I'd make the most delicious hush puppies to ever enter our household. I may have even dreamed of hush puppies, but since we don't remember 95% of our dreams I'll never know.
The mishaps began at approximately 4:30 pm today.
I am absolutely positive that I followed the recipe word for word, and I remember talking to myself as I mixed all the essential ingredients in my mixing bowl.
I waited for the oil to heat up, finished mixing my ingredients, and witnessed my first problem. The batter was extremely runny. It was like hush puppy milkshake.
I poured some of the liquid out and added a bit more cornmeal. And flour. And salt. And...sugar. Okay, maybe I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but it was still pretty close.
I then started frying little globs of batter in my hot oil, and like Pokemon, they began a very interesting evolution process that would result in the invention of an entirely new food.
First, the batter refused to stick together and ended up forming a variety of little floating shapes. Many of these shapes were very uncooked.
Second, the batter began to gather itself and formed into almost-hush puppy shaped balls. My hopes shot up.
Then I tasted one of the almost-hush puppies and my hopes shot down again.
Third (after adding more salt and sugar to the batter), the globs began to flatten and form strange, flat circle shapes. This kept happening until I finished my batter.
I decided to show my hush puppy failures to my sister. She then said something very interesting.
And so they did.
My failure at making hush puppies had turned into a success at inventing a food that no man has ever seen or tasted before. Behold, Turtle Cakes!
And I assure you, they taste nothing like hush puppies.
