The Sweet Mistake That Made Fried Chicken Taste Like Funnel Cake

They're both white. They're both dusty. And aside from some potential difference in texture — and of course, a difference in smell — it's honestly pretty easy to understand how people may confuse powdered sugar with flour as they work to get a meal on the table. That's particularly true for cooks who take the time and effort to remove powdered sugar and flour from their original packaging and store them in airtight containers. We can see how one might distractedly dip into the wrong one.

Such confusion does happen, as illustrated on a Reddit post regarding a man who "unintentionally discovered his favorite recipe for cooking largemouth bass" when he mistook powdered sugar for flour when coating his filets. Due to this mistake, he reportedly created a "really good" dish, "like a candied bass." (And yes, there is a non-accidental recipe for candied bass, from celebrity chef Robert Irvine of TV's "Restaurant: Impossible." His recipe for Sea Bass Crusted with Sesame Seed Candies uses a candy made from sesame seeds, honey, and/or sugar that is ground up for coating the bass, which is fried briefly and then baked to completion.) But the haphazard world of accidentally sweetened dishes remains more entertaining than on-purpose recipes, and in addition to fish, has also included chicken.

Recently, a woman using the name Neenscale on TikTok shared her mistake in grabbing the wrong white powdery baking substance. In the 19-second clip, Neenscale relates how she used powdered sugar instead of flour for breading on some chicken cutlets, and didn't catch the error until the cutlets were out of the frying pan. "I tried a little piece, it tasted like a funnel cake," she said. "I'm like, 'Something ain't right,'" she says as her cellphone camera moves to the leftover breading material. "Yeah, because this is sugar, not flour." The brief clip went viral, and is now at more than two million views, enough to prompt The Sun, a British newspaper, to do a story on the woman.

Neenscale said the sweet-fried chicken was good. "My boyfriend put some hot sauce on them and they were fuego," she said. "Give it a try sometime ... they're great." There were some incredulous responses to the video, pointing out the plastic container was clearly labeled "powdered sugar," and also suggesting that Neenscale should have been able to smell and feel the difference between flour and powdered sugar. Neenscale admitted in The Sun that she didn't look at the label, and added, ”I just didn't feel the difference because I was relaxing, sipping some vino." But Neenscale also was praised on TikTok, some seeing her mistake as a shortcut to a chicken-and-waffles meal, and one viewer saying "a funnel cake coated chicken sounds like it slaps anyways."