What’s the difference between elephant ears and funnel cakes? A search seems to indicate that the former is fried bread, and the latter is fried batter. But I found one place where elephant ears have ‘a delicious cinnamon taste’, which sounds more like a doughnut, and the person seemed to differentiate by texture. According to the Saint Petersburg Times:
So the definitive answer seems to be that elephant ears are fried bread dough, and funnel cakes are fried batter.
The last time I went to a fair was in the '80s, and no one heard of ‘elephant ears’ then. So I’m curious: If I went to a fair, would I find both elephant ears and funnel cakes? Or would funnel cakes be called elephant ears?
Same thing. By coincidence, another culture (Madeirans) invented exactly the same thing independently and gave it another name: malasadas.
Wikipedia describes malasadas as balls of fried dough. In my experience with malasadas made by U.S. Madeiran expatriates, my Madeiran-American grandmother, Portuguese feasts in New England, and Madeirans on the island of Madeira, they were always flat. Cinnamon and butter are optional.
Never heard of elephant ears before now. I have heard of Indian fry bread before though, which is not very similar to a funnel cake at all. Except that both are fried.
According to the link, and according to sites I visited before posting, they are different things. So whether they’re the ‘same thing’ depends on what part of the country the fair is in?
I have never had an elephant ear, but after looking at them online I can definitely say that they are not the same as funnel cakes. An elephant ear appears to be a sheet of dough which is rolled out and fried, whereas a funnel cake is made by pouring a thin batter through a funnel (hence the name) directly into hot oil. The funnel is moved around to form the shape of the cake. The result should be fairly light and airy with a little bit of crunch to it. I have noticed a tendency in recent decades for the funnel cakes to be made larger and heavier, with a much larger opening in the funnel so that instead of a light, crispy treat you get a heavy, soggy mess.
I suspect you’re right that many cultures have come up with fried dough. Malasadas are just another identical thing I have seen sold at feasts and fairs and so particularly relevant to the OP.
Maybe. I have seen “elephant ears” and “funnel cakes” advertised at the same stands and ordering either one gets you the same thing. This means at least some of the people selling them don’t think there’s a difference.
The OP’s article and this description are the first times I’ve ever noticed anyone drawing a distinction. It’s not clear to me that this is a distinction maintained in practice today. Even your description of today’s funnel cakes sounds a lot like a the elephant ears I am familiar with.
For the record, this is a funnel cake. Batter, extruded through a tube like cake frosting, directly into hot oil, where it tangles up like a snake’s nest into a glob that could reasonably be called a cake. And dusted with powdered sugar.
Is that what some of you are calling “elephant ears”? Because the rest of the google image search results looks more like sopapillas – made out of dough, not batter, cooked in one large, flat piece, and topped with cinnamon and sugar and possibly honey or fruit.
The pictures I’ve seen of elephant ears look like a flat piece of fried dough, like fry bread or sopapillas. A properly made funnel cake should look like a 3D lacy structure make of a (roughly) continuous 1/4" to 1/2" tube of fried batter. Dramatically different.
In Minnesota an elephant ear is an unbaked cinnamon roll rolled flat and then fried, then coated with sugar. A funnel cake is a stream of batter poured into hot oil and swirled into a circular pattern, often topped with sugar or fruit toppings or even ice cream. You can easily make elephant ears at home, and they’re available pre-made at my bakery, but I’ve only seen funnel cakes made fresh to order at fairs.
Absolutely wrong. This is an elephant ear. They’re made of a bread-type dough that’s rolled or stretched out and then dropped in a fryer. These are funnel cakes. They’re made of a liquid batter that’s dribbled into the fryer, often in a kind of spiral pattern. In my experience funnel cakes are greasier than elephant ears.
Which one you find at the fair seems to be regional. I grew up going to fairs in Washington State and we always got elephant ears. When I went to fairs on the East Coast there were many funnel cake stands and no one had heard of elephant ears. I went to the state fair here in Missouri a couple of years ago and there were many funnel cake stands and one lonely elephant ear stand.
That’s how I know them as well. They are not the same thing, except that they are both deep fried, bready products. I know an elephant ear to be a large, flattened piece of dough, like flat bread that has been deep friend. It does remind me of Indian fry bread or Hungarian lángos.
A funnel cake is batter passed through a funnel into a deep fryer.
Elephant ears are like Krispy Kreme donut consistency, they’re rolled out and stretched like a fat lumpy pancake, and are roughly the size of a paper plate. They’re dropped whole into the fryer like a big beignet. They are most often sprinkled with a mix of cinnamon and regular table sugar, and often are topped with fruit preserves or chocolate syrup. They are eaten straight from the plate or napkin they’re on in bites like a sloppy thin pizza. They’re more doughy and more substantial.
Funnel cakes are thin batter like pancake mix poured directly and slowly into the fry oil, where the batter twists and turns and kinks around to make a nest of thin fried dough strands all coiled around each other. They are most properly covered with about a pound of powdered sugar and eaten by pulling bits off with your hands as the sugar flies everywhere. They are light and airy - not much cooked interior batter, mostly fried surface and air pockets.
