Twinkie Bird on a Stick

You had to have guessed that after making a heart from Twinkies I wouldn't just let Steve eat the rest of the Twinkies in the box without using them for a craft first, right? You know me so well. 

I had originally planned to make blue birds, but when I went through my "still need to try" flavorings, nothing made sense with blue. So I switched to pink and used grapefruit oil to flavor it. Affiliate link here and throughout the post. 

Fun fact: When I was a teenager, we had a yellow parakeet named Twinkie. He had a ton of personality. His favorite bird-approved food was oat groats, but he would regularly help himself to all sorts of human food (including chicken) if we left our plates unguarded for two seconds. 

Twinkie Bird on a Stick

Materials: 

• Twinkies
• lollipop sticks
• Wilton candy melts (I didn't have pink on hand, so I used red and white)
• LorAnn flavoring
• Wilton candy eyeballs
• yellow or orange TicTacs
• yellow or orange M&Ms
• parchment paper
• sanding sugar

Steps: 

Unwrap the desired number of Twinkies (one for each adult bird and one for each pair of baby birds). Insert the lollipop sticks into the Twinkies. 

Set out a set of small eyes and a yellow TicTac for each baby bird. Use a sharp knife to cut yellow M&Ms in half, then set out sets of medium eyes and an M&M half for each adult bird. 

Next, you're going to melt the candy according to the package directions and flavor it as desired. Here's where you need to learn from my mistakes: Do not leave the Twinkies on a wire rack and pour the melted candy over them. And, do not pour the melted candy over the Twinkies and then place them on a wire rack to drain. Why? Because when you remove them, a bunch stays behind. 

Now learn from my next mistake. After the wire rack fails, do not put the melted candy into a narrow glass, thinking you can just dunk the Twinkie and then lift it out perfectly covered. Instead, the stick comes out and the Twinkie stays put. 

Instead, I had the best luck putting the Twinkies onto parchment paper and spooning the candy over them, adding the eyes and beak, and giving them a good dusting of sanding sugar. Then I lifted the bird out of the puddle, dipped the uncoated back side into the puddle, let the excess drip off, and then placed the bird in a clean spot to set up. 

There are five more Twinkies in the box. Any suggestions for what I should make next? I have a few ideas, but I'd love to hear what you think. 

Heart Twinkie Dessert

I spy a Twinkie, turned into a heart!

 

Yes, that's really a Twinkie. And yes, it's delicious. WAY better than a plain old Twinkie.

This is about the easiest plated dessert of all time. It doesn't take any longer than scooping ice cream into a bowl and topping it with syrups and nuts. 

To make it, unwrap a Twinkie with the underside facing up. Cut it on the diagonal, right through that middle cream spot. 

Arrange the two halves on a plate with their cut sides touching. One piece will be right side up and one will be upside down. 

Cover the heart with frosting. 

Cover the frosting with flavored sanding sugar. I used cinnamon, which tastes just like Red Hots. Yum! 

You can use whatever flavor you want, which is the beauty of making your own sanding sugars. I think raspberry would be amazing.

Decorate the plate with swirls of chocolate syrup, then add nuts. In just a few minutes, you have a plated dessert that belies its true origin as a lowly Twinkie.  

Turns out, there are a lot of Twinkie-themed items on Amazon. A surprising number of them reference grandmas. In my entire life, I've never come across anyone who calls their grandmother Twinkie. Grandma, Nana, Memaw, Nanny, Granny, Grammy, Nona... never Twinkie. 

Here are some non-grandma Twinkie items for your enjoyment. The t-shirt cracks me up.