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The store shelves where the Hostess display used to be have been bare as the sale of the snack cake company inches its way through layers of legalities.
Other baking companies are anxious to take over the name and start producing Twinkies and other snack cakes again, and it’s likely that a sale will come soon. But that’s little comfort if you’re hankering for a Twinkie now.
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to wait to have one of those cream-filled golden sponge cakes. Twinkies are pretty easy to make at home.
It was one of the first recipes that Todd Wilbur ever cloned.
Wilbur is the author of the “Top Secret Recipes” cookbook series, in which he takes brand-name foods or chain restaurant menu items and replicates them for the home cook. His Twinkie clone was in the first edition of the book, which came out in 1993.
Since the demise of the Twinkie in November, Wilbur said his website, www.topsecretrecipes.com, has seen a significant increase in traffic from “people looking for a home-brewed way of making a Twinkie.”
His recipe calls for a boxed pound cake mix, which makes it easy to replicate. For his 11th “Top Secret” book, Wilbur may try to make a recipe completely from scratch in the new book.
When Wilbur is creating a clone, he always begins by looking at the ingredient list on the package. Twinkies had 37 ingredients, many of which were thickeners or preservatives. But contrary to popular belief, he says, Twinkies won’t last forever.
“It looks exactly the same, but it smells terrible. The oils go rancid and it gets petrified; it turns into a rock.”
