What a pity this isn't Scotland. There are chippies (fish-and-chips shops) where they'll fry just about anything. Frozen pizza, Twinkies, Mars bars, you name it–they'll batter and deep-fry it.
Sure, we have our fried desserts here, our beignets and doughnuts and funnel cakes, but that's just the tip of the iceberg; the world is well ahead of us on heart-stopping, sweet afters. Here are just five of the fried desserts worthy of wider acceptance in America.
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1. Crema fritta
Quick, how do you improve custard? The Italians bread it and deep-fry it. Both the Sicilians and the Venetians claim to have invented it, but it doesn't really matter who's right; it only matters that you eat it when it's just cool enough to have set, but not so cool that it gets gummy. A hard trick to master.
2. Churros y chocolate
Whether this is breakfast or dessert depends on where you are: If you've been painting Madrid red, then it counts as dessert when you eat it from a street stall at 3 in the morning. Deep-fried, crunchy pieces of dough–usually not dusted in cinnamon sugar like their Mexican cousins–are ready for dipping in chocolate nearly as thick as Fox's U-Bet.
3. Turon
One of the finest foods to come out of the Philippines, this is sometimes better known as banana lumpia, which gives away its contents: bananas wrapped in egg-roll paper, then deep-fried and lacquered with sugar syrup. We dare you to eat only one.
4. Deep-fried pies
It wasn't enough for the Southerners, those inventors of wonderfully sticky, sweet desserts like Lane cake and Kool-Aid pickles (yes, those are dessert), to invent a portable pie. No, they had to take it just that extra step and deep-fry it. The very best kinds are the ones in which powdered sugar is dusted over the top as they come out, forming a sweet glaze.
5. Zoolbia
Funnel cakes? Please. The Persians were making funnel cakes while Europeans were still trying to figure out that whole fire thing. Zoolbia are orange funnel cakes made by mixing flour, sugar, water and yoghurt to form a dough that is passed through a funnel into hot oil. When it comes out, it's immediately soaked in flavored syrup (rosewater is most common, but orange-blossom syrup is also found)–light, sticky and addictive.
