Despite some tall tales, Hostess Twinkies do not last forever. The box of Twinkies that my friends gave me as a gag gift were, in fact, hard as a rock in less than a year. These cream-filled chiffon cake snacks, made with real, unprocessed dairy and eggs and whole-grain flours, won't last nearly as long as preservative-laden Twinkies, but you will almost certainly gobble them up in no time at all.

　　

Ingredients

8 large snack cakes

　　3/4 cup (90 grams) white spelt or all-purpose flour

　　1/4 cup (30 grams) ground millet or cake flour

　　1 teaspoon baking powder

　　1/2 teaspoon salt

　　4 egg whites

　　1/3 cup (66 grams) cane sugar

　　2 tablespoons honey

　　1/4 cup (2 ounces) water

　　2 tablespoons safflower oil

　　4 egg yolks

　　1 teaspoon vanilla extract

　　1 batch (about 1 cup) Snack Cake Crème

　　

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 350°F and lightly grease a canoe-style snack cake pan. If you don't have a snack cake pan, you can use 4-ounce loaf pans. Alternatively, create your own molds out of foil by shaping double thicknesses of aluminum foil around a spice bottle and setting the individual foil pieces next to each other in a cake pan.

　　

Step 2

Sift the spelt flour, ground millet flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside.

　　

Step 3

In a dry mixer bowl with dry beaters, beat the egg whites until stiff, about 2 minutes. Transfer the beaten egg whites to a clean bowl and set aside.

　　

Step 4

In the same mixer bowl, add the sugar, honey, water, oil, egg yolks, and vanilla and beat for 1 minute. Add the flour mixture and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes. Fold in half of the beaten egg whites; once the first half is fully incorporated, fold in the second half.

　　

Step 5

Pour the batter into the prepared molds, filling them 2/3 of the way full. Bake until golden, 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking. Cool the cakes in the pan for at least 20 minutes, then remove to a wire rack and cool completely before filling with the Snack Cake Crème.

　　

Step 6

To fill the cakes, use a skewer or chopstick to poke 2 holes partially through the snack cake from the bottom, and wiggle around to hollow out some space. Use a piping bag fitted with a Bismarck (#230) tip or a very small star-shaped tip to fill the cake with the Snack Cake Crème.

　　

Step 7

To make raspberry snack cakes, make the snack cakes as directed. Coat each filled snack cake with raspberry jam and dust with shredded coconut. They will be sticky and delicious.

　　

Step 8

Or for Chocolate-Coated Snack Cakes, try dipping your snack cakes in melted chocolate.

　　Cooks' Note

　　For gluten-free Vanilla Snack Cakes, replace the white spelt flour with an equal amount of gluten-free all-purpose baking mix.

　　2012 by Lara Ferroni. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Real Snacks: Make Your Favorite Childhood Treats Without All the Junk by permission of Sasquatch Books.