Every time I go to a theme park, concert, or festival, I am tempted to buy a funnel cake. It's not often I attend these events so when there is funnel cake present, I begin an inner battle of whether or not I should indulge. I wasn't attending any concerts or fairs this past weekend but it was my sister's bachelorette party, a good reason to bring out all the food indulgences. To cater to my sister's favorite dessert, red velvet, I created a red velvet funnel cake served with a whipped cream cheese dip. Needless to say, this dessert was a hit!
Red Velvet Funnel Cake
Ingredients
Cream cheese dip
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 4 ounces cream cheese softened at room temperature
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Funnel cake
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 1 ½ tablespoons red food coloring
- oil for frying
Remaining ingredients
- ¼ cup powdered sugar for dusting
Instructions
- Make the dip. Whip heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Set aside. Beat softened cream cheese with sugar and vanilla. Fold in whipped cream and set aside until ready to serve.
- Prepare funnel cakes. Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl including all-purpose flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk together buttermilk with vanilla, eggs, and red food coloring in a separate bowl. Add wet ingredients to the dry, mixing until well combined. Transfer batter into a zip-lock bag. Cut the tip of the bag in one corner.
- Heat oil in a saucepan, about 2 inches deep over medium-high heat to 350 degrees F.
- Carefully pipe batter in circular motions into the oil. Cook until the batter puffs up and turns deep red, about 1 minute. Flip funnel cake and cook for another minute. Remove and set on a plate lined with paper towel. Repeat with remaining batter.
- Dust funnel cakes with powdered sugar and serve with cream cheese dip.
**Helpful tips and common mistakes
Making funnel cake is as easy as mixing the ingredients together and frying. Sure you can go for the regular, ordinary cake, but why not be adventurous and make a red velvet funnel cake? To turn this into a red velvet flavor, we're going to add ingredients like buttermilk, cocoa powder, and red food coloring.
Gather all of the ingredients since the batter comes together quickly. Just mix the dry ingredients then the wet ingredients and transfer the mixture into a piping bag or Ziploc bag. You can make the batter ahead of time and chill it until you're ready to fry.
For the cream cheese dip, beat together softened cream cheese with sugar and vanilla until well mixed. Fold in whipped cream to the mixture, making the cream dip light and dippable. You can also make the dip the day before.
This recipe makes 6-8 funnel cakes, depending on how big you want to make them. You can also get creative and make mini-sized funnel cakes. Finish the red velvet funnel cakes with powdered sugar and plop a dollop of the cream cheese dip on top. Like all fried foods, funnel cake is best served fresh.
This cake is wonderfully light and fluffy while the cream cheese dip just completes the dessert. Now there's no need to wait for the next fair for a funnel cake!
For more dessert fun check out this smores banana sandwich melt!
Julie Clark
This is a gorgeous funnel cake! Love that red!
cma0425
Thanks for visiting!
eunice
SOOOOO good!
cma0425
🙂
Teresa
Do you not put sugar in the funnel cake batter?
Cherry on My Sundae
Sorry Teresa, that was an error on my part. I've included the sugar in the recipe so that the funnel cake batter has 1/4 cup granulated sugar. Thank you and let me know if you have any other questions!