Oh, the Margaritas You'll Deep Fry

Twenty-five fascinating fried foods from the Texas State Fair

For years, county fairs have been at the forefront of deep-frying science, splicing and creating mutant "foods" that are all at once monstrous and wondrous. The Texas State Fair -- the largest state fair in the country -- holds a yearly competition for the most innovative deep-fried foods. Here are 25 fried Frankenfoods from fairs past:

Bubblegum

Collin Harvey/Flickr

It's actually bubblegum-flavored marshmallows, battered and deep fried and sprinkled with Chiclets. Do you chew this? Eat it? Who knows, but you can buy it.

Butter

mgerskup/Flickr

Frozen balls of butter, battered and fried and served with four sauces. Because why not.

Beer

Stacy Huggins/Flickr

Nope, this isn't beer battered. This is beer: battered and fried. The beer is poured into little ravioli pockets which burst with scalding suds upon first bite.

Peanut Butter Banana Cheeseburgers

Cheryl Reas via NBC

Elvis would probably make a special trip to Texas just to see this.

Coke

L. Richarz/Flickr

An enterprising chef found a way to deep fry soda without the 3rd degree burns.

Chicken Fried Bacon

ladybugbkt/Flickr

This is self-explanatory. And probably delicious.

Jelly Belly Jelly Beans

RosieTulips/Flickr

It's really just batter with some Jelly Belly jelly beans mixed in, like a fritter on a sugar high.

Cadbury Creme Eggs

Easter doesn't have nearly enough fried foods... until now.

Pizza

Siggi Churchill/Flickr

It's not just pizza ingredients inside a ball of dough. No. It's an actual slice of pizza, breaded and fried.

Kool-Aid

nineminutes/Flickr

With an extra sprinkle of Kool-Aid powder over the top instead of powdered sugar.

French Fry-Coated Hot Dog

phil.lees/Flickr

See? It exists.

Pecan Pie

erichcpeters/Flickr

There's probably not a more delicious way to gain five pounds.

Lattes

Traveling Fools of America/Flickr

This one is a bit of a misnomer, it seems; the fried part is a sweet dough, which is topped with coffee-flavored ice cream, whipped cream and shaved chocolate.

PB&J

bittermelon/Flickr

With a banana thrown in for good measure.

Salsa

thestir.com

Deep-fried condiments can't be a good thing, but according to some people, this is the best-tasting item at the fair. It's salsa mixed with masa, then rolled in crushed tortilla chips before frying.

Pop Tarts

RosieTulips/Twitter

It's hard to see, but there's a pop tart in there.

Margaritas

David Berkowitz/Flickr

Funnel cake batter made with margarita mixer, fried and soaked in more margarita, all served in a salt-rimmed glass.

Club Salad

New York Daily News

The thing about salad is that it's good for you, usually. Not this time. This is a spinach wrap filled with ham, bacon, cheese, chicken, tomatoes, shredded lettuce and carrots, fried and served on a bed of lettuce.

S'mores

David Berkowitz/Flickr

It was only a matter of time.

Pumpkin Pie

It's a pocket filled with pumpkin pie, rolled in cinnamon and ginger snaps, fried and served with whipped cream.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Blazenhoff/Flickr

Each item is battered and fried individually, skewered and served with whipped cream and a cherry. The "upside-down" part is up to you.

Deep-Fried Cheesecake

Stacey Higgins/Flickr

Cheesecake filling wrapped in a tortilla, fried.

Oreos

Jenn Larsen/Flickr

These are amazing, actually.

And this year's winners, announced this week:

Fried Jambalaya: Best Taste

The Dallas Morning News

Fried Bacon Cinnamon Roll: Most Creative

MORE FROM MENTAL FLOSS

This post also appears on Mental Floss, an Atlantic partner site.

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”

Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. “It’s good blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.”