Funnel Cake is a fair favorite, but it’s even better made at home! You can enjoy crispy, fried funnel cakes with powdered sugar any time of the year with this easy recipe!
Have fun and great creative, try drizzling with homemade caramel sauce, hot fudge sauce, or your favorite toppings!
What is a Funnel Cake
If you’ve been wondering “Is funnel cake a cake?”, the answer is no. Funnel cake is a lovely light batter fried until golden brown, most often topped with powdered sugar. It is a sweet and delicious fair food that no one really thinks to make at home, and yet it makes me wonder, why not?!
They are actually incredibly easy to make. If you can stir together a simple batter and heat a bit of oil in a pan, you can make this easy homemade funnel cake recipe!
But why stop there, if you’re suddenly craving all the fair food, try these churros, caramel apples or homemade mini corn dogs. They are sure to satisfy your craving!
How to Make Funnel Cakes
This recipe makes two large funnel cakes. Because they really need to be eaten fresh, I wanted a small batch that can easily be doubled or tripled when you need it.
- Mix together wet ingredients.
- Whisk in dry ingredients until completely smooth (per recipe below).
- In a pot of hot oil, drizzle batter in thin lines, swirling and overlapping.
- Cook just until golden, using tongs to carefully flip.
Remove to a paper towel to drain excess oil. Dust with powdered sugar, add your toppings of choice, and serve immediately.
Best Funnel Cake Toppings
The most difficult thing about making homemade funnel cakes might be deciding what to top them with ;).
Traditionally, they are served with a generous sprinkling of powdered sugar. But there are so many fun toppings to try!
- Fruit: Fresh sliced strawberries, pineapples, or an assortment of berries!
- Ice Cream: A scoop of your favorite ice cream, like classic vanilla or mint chocolate chip ice cream.
- Sauce: Drizzle with chocolate sauce, homemade nutella, caramel sauce, or even whipped cream!
- Sprinkles: Try cinnamon sugar like a churro or classic rainbow sprinkles.
Whatever you choose, just be sure you eat them while they’re fresh and warm!
More Fun Desserts
-
- Homemade Jelly Jigglers – with real fruit juice
- Mini Cinnamon Donut Holes – just 3 ingredients!
- Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes – perfect handheld portions!
- Easy Fruit Pizza – colorful, sweet, and full of flavor!
- Frozen Hot Chocolate – with 3 ways to serve
Homemade Funnel Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¼ cup milk
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon water
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- ½ cup all purpose flour
- 4 tablespoons powdered sugar
Instructions
- In a large liquid measuring cup or batter bowl with a spout, whisk together milk, egg, water and vanilla.
- Add sugar, baking powder and salt and whisk until combined.
- Add the flour, and whisk until completely smooth. Set aside.
- In a medium, deep-sided pan or pot, heat 1" of oil to 375°F over medium-high heat. When you put the end of a wooden spoon in the pot and bubbles form around the spoon, it's ready. Reduce heat to medium.
- Drizzle batter from cup in a thin line, swirling around the pan and overlapping as desired. Cook for 2 minutes or until light golden brown, then flip and cook another 2 minutes or until golden brown.
- Dust with 2 tablespoons powdered sugar and serve. Repeat one more time with the remaining batter.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Dessert
Cuisine American© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
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Let’s start by saying that funnel cakes are $7 a piece at the zoo. Outrageous! lol
We can make 9 for less than 3 bux at the house and they taste amazing (we add one more tbsp of sugar) This recipe of perfect, our family just had a bit of a sweet tooth. We can eat them plain when they’re sweet so it’s a tiny trade off.
My 13 year old asked if I could make funnel cakes today, so I did a quick search and found your recipe. It was so easy to do and turned out great. He loved them and asked to keep this recipe as a new family fave. Thanks!
It’s tells how to make it but where is the information need to make it the ingredients I have not found them yet on here
To find the ingredients you can scroll down towards the bottom to find the recipe or at the top you can hit the “jump to recipe” button. I hope this helps LaKeisha!
Terrible, batter was too runny to deal with burnt up in tiny little balls, and any that did form into a considerable ball was raw on the inside.
I was skeptical when I saw the runny batter and small amount – it was AMAZING! This recipe made 3 batches in my pan, the sprinkled powdered sugar with sprinkles and a few chocolate chips was perfect on the soft delicious and crisp funnel cake! Will make again, so easy.
I just made these for the first time and they were quick, easy and delicious!!
a lot of kids don’t like cooking so it’s kind of weird but i love it and i am 12 actually so this is going to be fun.
a only if i could post a picture! Came out so delicious and exactly like the carnival funnel cakes very easy and fun to make highly recommend this specific recipe! you can add whatever toppings you’d like as the base is not sweet.. such as strawberries, icecream,chocolate drizzle, whipped cream. etc…
I am so glad you loved this recipe Areli! If you are on Instagram, you can post a photo there and tag us at @spendpennies so we can see your photo!
The taste was delicious but my dough was so thin it never made an actual funnel cake. It was a mess with tons of little dough strings and droplets. I ended up with deep fried pancakes. It was hidden under a ton of powdered sugar and I ate it anyway, but I was a little disappointed.
Exact same thing happened when I tried. Good flavor but a huge mess.
Hi, what the best oil to use? Peanut oil?
Thanks, looking forward to trying this.
Vegetable/canola oil is best for this recipe, it has a higher smoke point than olive oil :)