(rhythmic jazz music) - Greetings, my beautiful
lovelies, it's Emmy. Welcome back to another gadget test. Today, I'm gonna be
testing out a little find that I found at my local thrift store, and it is this gem. (gentle harp music) And this is a Twinkies Maker. Now, if you're not familiar with Twinkies, Twinkies are made by the Hostess Company. They are a little kind of tube
of fluffy yellow chiffon cake filled with a cream filling. You open it up, and inside you've got this white fluffy cream. Now, there is a cult following
when it comes to Twinkies. I personally didn't grow
up eating them much, I can count on one hand how
many times I've had a Twinkie. In fact, I think all the
times I've really had them have been on this show. If you follow me at all on social media you know that last week,
I went to the thrift store which I often do because I
love hunting for treasures. I have made other things with finds that I found at the thrift store including a thrift store bread maker, a
thrift store ice cream maker, and I paid $6.99 for it. I'm gonna remove the sticker
because once this gets hot this is probably going to stick
permanently and turn dark. So pretty good deal. So this was manufactured
several years ago. Let's see if there's a date on here. There is not. This seems to be in excellent condition. It still has the original
little twist tie on it. It still has the cap on the plug. And we open it inside, it
doesn't even look like. (maker slams)
Oops! It doesn't look like it was ever used. So this did not come in its original box and did not include a recipe
manual, instruction manual. But when I posted this on Facebook, many of you beautiful lovelies chimed in that you too had one of these machines, and then sent me copies of
your instruction manual. So that was absolutely wonderful. I remember distinctly as a child seeing at twin pack of Twinkies that you could purchase them
like that at the grocery store. Because they were always next
to the chocolate cupcakes, which were my favorite. I would always get the
Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes, never even bothered with the Twinkies because there's no chocolate involved. But I remember seeing the twin pack. But when I went in the grocery store, all I could find is a 10 pack. No little twinsies, none of that. Maybe at a convenience store? I don't know, Twinkie
experts chime in, tell me, tell me do you, can you not
get the little twinies anymore? I dunno. Okay, let's make the batter, shall we? One stick of room temperature butter. I cut this up so it would warm up faster. And we're gonna cream
that with some sugar. All right, spatula. So that's a half cup. Hoop! Cup of sugar. Blend this together with a hand mixer. Here we go, it's gonna be a little loud. (mixer buzzing) Whoa, take it easy. That's one? That seems a bit fast. Okay. ♪ Do do do do do do ♪ One egg yolk, look at that, beautiful. Oops. Into the. (grunts) All of you in there. (sighs) Okay, let's use this. Okay. And then we're gonna add two eggs. Also at room temperature. (egg cracking) One, two. Two teaspoons of vanilla. One. Two. Beat that all together. (mixer buzzing) 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour. ♪ Boop a doop a doop. ♪ 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Boop. And. ♪ Ba ba ba ba. ♪ Baking powder, how much baking powder? One teaspoon of baking powder. ♪ Baking powder, soda ♪ Look how much soda, where's the powder? Oh, under the Marmite. One teaspoon of baking powder. Run this a bit and then I'm gonna add my 3/4 of a cup of milk. (mixer buzzing) The rest of this we can
just use the spatula for. Okay, so now we're going
to preheat the maker and when it turns green it is ready. So, we'll let that go. And I think to make this easier to fill, I'm gonna to use a pastry bag with no tip. I'm gonna clip the end with a clip here. Keep everything from going
all over the place hopefully, and just gonna to fill this up. Think this'll just make things easier. Especially since I'm going
to be filling my Twinkies with some interesting fillings. I'm gonna do the original of course, which is just the cream filling, but I thought why not
have a little bit of fun? So I think putting the batter
in a piping bag will help with that process. This has not turned green yet. Oh, it turned green. Thank you Twinkie maker! Okay, I've got some oil
and a silicone brush. And I'm going to very
well oil everything here. (gentle music) This looks like it's a non-stick coating, but the instructions say specifically to oil everything down. So, oiling I am. So I've got some fillings
that I have already prepared. I'm gonna do a hot dog Twinkie. I'm gonna do pizza Twinkie. I'm gonna do a Snickers Twinkie. Just gonna fill this up. I'm just gonna do three plain. This one right here, piece of
hot dog right in the middle. Covered with more batter. Then I'm gonna do another one, half, and put a piece of string
cheese in the middle. And that will be my pizza one, along with some of these
tiny itty bitty pepperonis right here. Look at these pepperonis,
aren't they the cutest? Little bit more batter. 1/4 of a Snickers bar right in the middle. Top it with more batter. Now we're supposed to close this and cook it four to seven minutes. I'm gonna check it after four minutes to see how they're doing. I'm gonna use a toothpick
and when it comes out clean, we know that our little cakes are ready. Okay, see ya in a few minutes! Ugh, shut up. Okay, that was four
minutes, let's check on 'em. Oh, look how much they've
puffed up and cooked. Okay, let's give us a little poke. Definitely, oh, I poked
the hotdog, I think. Yeah, they still feel a
little bit soft in the middle. So, let's give these
a couple more minutes. Six minutes. All righty, let's take a look at these. These are definitely feeling cake-like. When I watched videos of people
trying to take these out, there was a bit of a struggle, but I think there's an easy answer. I'm gonna unplug this. Rather than struggling and
trying to get these out and risk messing my Twinkies up, I'm gonna close this
up, turn it upside down. Oh, one perfect Twinkie. Yes, I feel like the Count. So I'm going to transfer
that to my baking tray. (maker rattles) Two perfect Twinkie. Ah, ah, ah! Yes. (maker rattles) Okay, where's my toothpick? This one wants to come out, just a little bit of coaxing here. (gentle music) (sighs) Three, perfect twinkie. Ah, ah, ah, this is great. These are actually turning
out better than I expected. Okay. Now I'm transferring them to, Oh. Yes. Oh no, now these are
all mixed up (laughs). Now I don't know which ones are which. Wow, this is gonna be a little bit like twinkie roulette or something. So this one was the Snickers bar. They look pretty stinkin' great! I'm impressed. Right, now we're gonna prepare a filling. I've got three tablespoons
of room temperature butter, along with an equal amount of shortening, cream these together. (mixer buzzing) Now I'm gonna slowly add
one cup of powdered sugar. (mixer buzzing) We're gonna beat this for two minutes. (mixer buzzing) Okay, now we're gonna gradually add one cup of corn syrup. (mixer buzzing) Oh, that was a lot. (mixer buzzing) Okay, I think that's our filling. It's kind of a cross between
a frosting and an icing, although it is a little
closer to a frosting. Whenever I think of the filling
inside of a Twinkie though, I think of something
really light and fluffy, a little bit more like whipped cream. Well, this seems a little bit more like a seven minute icing, really. So apparently this machine
came with a cream filler, but I'm gonna use a piping bag with a little round tip as a substitution. It should work out just fine. Okay, now for the fun part. We're gonna fill the cakes. So here is an original Twinkie. You can see that the cream has
been injected in three spots at the bottom of the cake. So, I'm gonna do the same
thing with my piping bag here. I'm gonna use a chopstick and kind of pre-drill some holes here. These already feel pretty
different than the original ones, I just squoze the original
ones which feel very soft, and these have a bit of
a harder crust to them. I'm actually use the
back of the chopstick to kind of widen the hole a bit so that the pastry tip will actually fit. I'm gonna to inject some cream in there. Can't really tell when it fills up. So I'm just giving it a good squeeze. Scrape some of that excess off, and there is a filled Twinkie. So for the next one, I'm gonna add some sliced strawberries. See if I can fit a piece
of strawberry in there. The strawberry is
basically filling the hole. So I'm going to make holes
in between to put the cream. Inject, inject. And finally we have our pizza one. So for that one, and I'm
going to fill it with a little bit of pizza sauce. So there we have it,
five different Twinkies. Pizza, hot dog, Snickers, strawberry shortcake, and original. Yay! A little star of custom Twinkies. Now, let's go ahead
and give these a taste. So, if we compare side by side, the homemade version is a little bit narrower, a little bit shorter, But pretty similar color. But immediately I noticed
there's a difference in texture. The original Twinkie is much softer and feels a little bit lighter. And the homemade one is
a little bit crunchier. Break open the original to show you what it looks like inside. There is the classic very
white frosting in the middle. Actually more like a
cream, it's very light. Let's give that a taste! Here we go! (speaking in foreign language) Very sweet, light, fluffy texture with a cream filling
that's more like Cool Whip. It's fluffy and kind of sweet. A little bit of vanilla. I almost tastes a kind
of lemon chiffon flavor, but I don't think there's
any lemon in here. Just my imagination. But it has the texture of chiffon cake; very fluffy with a little
bit of a chew to it. And the filling is very,
very soft and fluffy. A little bit sticky, Very sweet with a slight
vanilla flavor to it. So there's the cake! Very, very tender. Let's compare that with the
cream filled homemade version. Now let's break this open and
see how we did in the middle. Not much of a cream filling, definitely doesn't look like the original in terms of having it nice and centered and fluffy and present. This one has a kind of goopier texture. It's a little more transparent. It's not so opaque and white and bright. So, let's give this taste, here we go! Mm. So it both tastes and
feels very, very different. The cake crumb is much denser, although it is like a yellow cake, but compared to the original, which is much more like a
chiffon or angel food cake, which is really really light, this is much more like a yellow cake. Denser, and almost has the
consistency of cornbread because the outside is kind of crunchy. Mm-hmm. I shouldn't say crunchy, but it has more of a kind of baked in, a little bit more like when
you have a brownie edge, it's just a little bit
more cooked on the outside. And the filling is completely different, completely different texture. And in terms of a textural experience, you don't really notice it at all. You taste a little bit extra sweetness, but there's not this kind
of light fluffy interior, like you have in the original. Very, very different. Not unpleasant! It's tasty, it's just
not really a Twinkie. Let's try the strawberry shortcake one. Let's open that one up. Filling is a little bit disappointing. There is some strawberry in there, but can't really see it in cross section. But let's give it a go. Mmmm! (chuckles) I like that. Really classic combination. Again, the texture of the cake is wrong, but that combination of
sweetness strawberry cake. Yum. Now let's try this one,
which is our pizza one. I'm gonna cut this one 'cause
it has some cheese in it. So let's see how we did. (laughs) That actually is pretty funny. So we've got a melted layer of cheese, we've got a little bit of pepperoni, and a little injection of sauce. Let's give that one a go. Definitely flavors of pizza. We've got mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, a little bit of sauce,
and that crust part. Tastes like sweet cornbread. It's actually a great combination. A little dry though. I think a little more
sauce would be better. Let's try the hot dog version. (laughs) Not quite centered, but there definitely is
a hot dog in the middle. All right, let's give that a go. Mmm, that's great. That's actually my favorite one so far. That's like a corn dog. The cake is not too sweet, and actually goes really, really well with a salty hot dog in the middle. Great. Great, great, great. Little hushpuppy corn doggy thingy. Love it. And this one got a little
bit crisp on the bottom here. Really great textural contrast. Little bit of crispiness. Like that! Alrighty, so here is the
Snickers bar version. Okay, let's cut that one. Oh, now that's a satisfying center. Look at that. Kind of melted, kind of gooey. You could see a little bit of
the chocolate coming through. Okay, I like the amount
of filling in there, and I like that it's centered. Okay, let's get this one a go. Mmm, mm-hmm. I'm a huge Snickers bar fan, so there's no reason why
I wouldn't like this. The proportion of cake to
chocolate bar is perfect in there. Love this one. This one and the hot dog one
are definitely my favorite. If your ultimate goal is to actually create something that
is similar to a Twinkie in terms of texture and flavor, it doesn't really do it. Does it make little cake bars that are fun to cook up and fill? Yes, most definitely. Could also use this to
make little omlettes, I can imagine little omelette sticks, or something like that. Thank you guys so much for joining me. I hope you guys enjoy that one. I hope you guys learned something. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social
media, like this video, subscribe, and I shall
see you in the next one. Toodaloo! Take care, bye! (energetic violin music) (rhythmic jazz music) ♪ Ma ma ♪
