You're One Ingredient Away From Turning Twinkies Into Dessert Hot Dogs

Twinkies are fine on their own, but they make an even better canvas for creating your own junk food masterpiece (and we mean that in the nicest possible way). These snack cakes reach new heights when they're deep fried, but have you tried them wrapped in bacon and cooked in an air fryer? You can also repurpose them to make easy cake pops, but if you really want something cute for dessert, turn them into trompe l'œil "hot dogs" by adding a candy weiner.

How to make a two-ingredient dessert dog couldn't be much simpler: Slit the Twinkie (being sure to leave a "hinge" at the back, as hot dog buns are only semi-detached); then insert any kind of long, roughly tubular, or at least rounded-off rectangular candy. A Twix bar would work, although its dark hue more closely resembles that of a well-grilled sausage than a hot dog. You could also go with a smooth, fat red licorice stick like Haribo's strawberry Piccolos or even a Chick-O-Stick log — check the dollar store for these retro candies if you can't find them in a standard supermarket. Yet another option, if you're willing to go to a little extra work, is to bake (or buy) a batch of brownies, then cut these into fingers to fit inside the Twinkie "buns."

To be perfectly frank, your dessert dogs aren't going to look quite as wiener-worthy as you may wish without a few more ingredients. At the very least, squiggle some red or yellow frosting (or both) on top of the filling to resemble ketchup or mustard. You could also chop up some green gummy candies to make "pickle relish," and even sprinkle sesame seeds on the Twinkie to give the bun a bit more verisimilitude (opt for poppy seeds if you prefer Chicago dogs).

Don't stop there, though! Turn those dessert dogs into a complete meal by adding some "fries" made from sliced-up pound cake. You could also squiggle them with red frosting or put a blob of strawberry jam in a tiny paper cup and serve it on the side as a "ketchup" dip. As an alternative, you could also roll a few canned pineapple rings in crushed vanilla cookie crumbs or even go all-out and dip them in batter and deep-fry them to make faux onion rings.