Baked hush puppies

Hi everyone,

A culinary experiment from my end this evening.  I'd had a box of hush puppy mix on the shelf for ages. I'd been wrestling between the impetuses (grammar?) of wanting to make them and not wanting to deep-fry anything for health reasons.  I decided to have a go at baking them instead.

The recipe called for combining the packet mix, plus half a cup of milk and an egg. No problem there, and I mixed them while the oven warmed up.

I set the oven for 400°F - the recipe called for oil of 350°F and it seemed to me to crank it up a bit to allow for the cooking medium being air.

I pressed two cupcake trays into use for baking and got 17 hush puppies from the mix.

I set them to bake for about 15 minutes (rather than frying for about 4 minutes) for the same reason as I upped the heat.  They came out golden and smelling good!

Breaking one open, it was pleasantly crumbly and cooked right through, and (being unfried) not at all oily or greasy.

The drawback with not frying them is they did come out a bit dry, where frying would have left them moist.  To offset this I squeezed some tomato sauce into a saucer and also made a basic dip from tomato sauce and hot sauce.

A better thought out dip is needed with them - perhaps mayonnaise with cajun seasoning, or a bacon-and-white-sauce concoction.  Be that as it may: there were no complaints from the tribe here, and certainly none left.

Hope you feel like giving this a try next time you're thinking about appetisers!