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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
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Surprised my husband with these recipe he randomly tells about funnel cakes. I’ve never had then so wasn’t sure what it involved. This recipe was very easy to follow, basic ingredients and most important Delicious!
I doubled the recipe, including the amount of baking powder, and it tasted metallic. Next time I will decrease the baking powder and increase the sugar in the batter.
This was fanstatic and addicting! very simple to put together. It’s even tasty without powdered sugar. This makes a pretty big batch, so I put my put left over batter in a big zip lock for next time. All you have to do is cut a corner, and fry. Make sure oil temp is 350 degrees or pretty close so it doesn’t burn or get to greasy! Thanks for sharing.
Absolutely fantastic!!
We have several in our family who cannot tolerate dairy, so we replaced the milk with Almond Milk. …Turned out absolutely delicious and totally satisfied my craving for a funnel cake since we were at a festival a couple weeks ago. This recipe was easy to follow and include our kiddoes in the fun! I have recommended this recipe to 3 family members since last night! Ten stars. I may or may not have eaten two dinner plate-sized funnel cakes to myself last night. Yummm-o!
at no where in the recipe did they actually say what kind of batter you need to make funnel cake which is the purpose if looking up this recipe not to find out what kind of toppings to out on it
Hi Jonathan, the entire recipe is available by using the Jump to Recipe button at the top or by scrolling to the bottom. There you will find the exact measurements and instructions. I hope that helps!
How much oil am I supposed to use??
Hi Kimora, you will want your pan to be filled with 1″ of oil so how much you need will depend on how wide your pan is.
these are a great recipe turned out perfect I rarely get to say that it seems but thank you now my question is the nutritional info. is approx. I understand but is that per funnel cake or both??
I am so glad you enjoyed this recipe Sharon! The nutritional value is for one funnel cake.
This didn’t work at all lol. I followed it to a T and ended up with gross greasy sludge
oh no lol…did you make sure the oil temp was 350 degrees? Did you make sure you used baking powder, not soda? Good luck next time around.
Yep me too
I multiplied this recipe by 40 and made enough funnel cake to feed 300 college students. Not only was it a huge success, it was super easy to put together, and will be in my arsenal for quick at home desserts.
Perfect recipe! Made this for my family tonight. They all loved it. We topped it with ice cream, fresh strawberries, and homemade whipped cream. Thank you so much for sharing!!
This is simply Delicious! It’s like bringing a small taste of carnival home :) Love the texture. I added a pinch of allspice and cinnamon for a slightly different flavor. It’s become a family favorite with all the different toppings to choose from ;) Excellent recipe if you follow the steps.
I added crushed up Oreos to the batter and it was delicious and a family hit. Making again tonight
Ooo, that sounds like an amazing addition, Christiana!
Love this recipe! Only had coconut oil and had great results. Made them 3 x now.
Easy delicious recipe. I personally added another tablespoon or 2 of sugar in mines but I loved it. Took me no more than 10 minutes to make.
It was decent, but the funnel cake needed more sweetness. I know that sounds weird because you add powder sugar or other surgery toppings, but I just like a sprinkle of powder sugar and cinnamon on top, but it needed more with this recipe and still was a bit bland. Batter just needed something, whether it’s more sugar, or more vanilla, something was just a bit off. Otherwise, fried up real good and recipe was on point.
This was an awesome recipe. I was in the mood for something sweet and crunchy and this hit the spot!! Today was my daughter’s first time trying a funnel cake and she is in heaven!!
Made with my 13 year old at midnight. Super easy. Super good!
Too easy, and too good. It was my husband’s first (he’s Norwegian and we live in Norway) and he is a big fan! I didn’t read carefully, and used all the batter at once instead of dividing it up into two “cakes”, but it didn’t matter in the end…it was just less squiggly. Thanks for the recipe!
So good. I just did it and it came out delicious. So easy to follow. Thanks. :)
I burnt my hand and am currently holding it under running water but it tasted really good
Oh no! I am sorry that happened, Eem. But so glad these turned out delicious for you.