Ok, for those who want to try making their own Twinkies at home I’ve got the exact recipe plus an instructional video here by a guy who specifically specializes in cloning famous food items (big macs, Starbucks cranberry bars, snickers, etc.).
The Twinkie was invented on April 6, 1930 by bakery manager James Dewar in Schiller Park, Illinois, who was working for Continental Baking Company, the parent company behind Hostess, he made use of pans that were only used for shortcake production during the very short 6-week strawberry season.
The Twinkie originally contained a banana cream filling, but they replaced it with the current standard vanilla cream filling because of a banana shortage during World War II. In June 2007, Hostess announced that they were going to start making the banana-flavored Twinkie again.
The banana-flavored version had originally been started as a limited-time promotion, however, due to the fact that sales went up by 20% when the banana version was offered, Hostess has decided that the banana Twinkie will now become a permanent part of the Twinkie product line. Here’s the video, the specific recipe is just below it:
Homemade Twinkie Recipe
Ingredients for the cake:
- Non-stick spray
- 4 egg whites
- 1 16-oz box of golden pound cake mix
- 2/3 cup of water
Ingredients for the filling:
- 2 tsp very hot water
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 cups marshmellow cream (or one 7 oz jar)
- 1/2 cup shortening
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
What to do:
- Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Make the molds out of aluminum foil as per the instructions in the video, you will need 10 of them, and don’t forget to use the non-stick spray.
- Beat the egg whites until stiff as per the video. In a separate bowl combine the cake mix with water and beat until thoroughly blended (around 2 minutes). Then, pour the egg whites into the cake mix and slowly combine until blended.
- Pour the batter into the molds such that it’s about 3/4 of an inch deep in each one. Bake in the pre-heated oven for around 30 minutes, or until the cakes are golden brown and a toothpick will come out clean.
- To do the cream filling, first mix the salt into the bowl of hot water, and mix until the salt is dissolved. Let it cool.
- Combine the marshmellow cream, shortening, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a bowl and mix, preferably with an electric mixer on high, until fluffy.
- Now pour the salt water solution in and mix.
- When the cakes are done, just use a chopstick and bag or pastry gun as in the video to inject the cream filling.
Yum.
Cloning Other Delicious Recipes (from places like Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, etc.)
After discovering and trying (with great success!) this twinkie recipe a few months ago, I went in search of further recipes of famous dishes (and especially deserts) that I might like, and ended up learning how to make all sorts of dishes that I had tried before and loved from well-known restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and more.
The way I did this was I found out that there was actually a series of books that had been published specifically dedicated to exposing the recipes for these dishes and teaching you precisely how to replicate them at home! If you’re really interested in doing this sort of stuff and you enjoyed the Twinkie recipe above, I highly recommend you check it out, it’s called: America’s Secret Recipes (click here to check out their site), and they show you how to make dishes like some of these that I tried and loved: Applebee’s Orange Creamsicle Cake, Hard Rock Cafe’s ‘Pig Sandwich’, Mrs. Field’s Peanut Butter Cookies, Olive Garden’s Apple Carmelina, and P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef. There are 2 volumes and several hundred recipes, those were just my favorites–again, I’ve personally tried the recipes in this book, if you follow them properly you will get an absolutely identical result to what your favorite restaurant can do, I can’t recommend it highly enough if you liked what you got with the Twinkies and want to do more of this.
Additional Twinkie Awesomeness
How to make deep fried twinkies, oh boy!!! (with chocolate sprinkles…maybe they’re Belgian?) 
