Since 1930 Hostess has been making Twinkies and has since then turned them into an American icon. Images of children munching on the sponge cake in the school play yard come to mind with yellow crumbs on their bright, gleaming faces as they lick the delicious white gooey insides…
Now here’s an image of a Twinkie you probably couldn’t imagine… Out in the woods, where your footprints simply retract into a lush, woodsy environment. There is no cell phone reception, dinner is caught riverside and bears populate the area. Perched atop a high branch of a tree, there lays a Hostess Twinkie sponge cake.
My father’s friend conducted an experiment. He unwrapped a Twinkie and placed it on a high branch of a tree near his camp. When he returned two years later, the Hostess Twinkie sponge cake was in exactly the same place as he left it. It appeared as if it had been completely untouched. Not even a squirrel had been desperate enough to eat it, much less a bear.
Steve Ettlinger, author of “Twinkie, Deconstructed” determined there were 39 ingredients in the Hostess Twinkie sponge cake. According to ABC News, Ettlinger said, "It's more than I expected. When I first looked at it, I thought, yeah well, maybe a dozen. Thirty-nine!" It’s those thirty-nine ingredients that allow the illustrious Twinkie to remain intact on a tree branch for two years.
Corn dextrin is one of those thirty-nine ingredients used in the Hostess sponge cake (a type of corn starch, used as thickener) to give the Twinkie its sticky crust. On its own though, corn dextrin takes on the form of a glue-like substance. Corn dextrin is commonly used as the gum seal used on the back of envelopes.
Another ingredient found in the white creamy center of the sponge cake is cellulose gum. This is also a thickener and responsible for the Hostess Twinkie’s “delicious white gooey inside”. "It's a great fat substitute,” [Ettlinger says of cellulose gum], “It's in a lot of low fat salad dressings, ice creams and it's used in rocket fuel to give a slightly gelatinous feel to the rocket fuel. I just love that."
Still unconvinced Twinkies sponge cakes will not decompose because of their ingredients? Take a Hostess Twinkie and throw it in a blender, I guarantee the end result would not look appetizing. There would be nowhere for those thirty-nine ingredients to hide, unless God forbid, in your thighs. Unfortunately, Twinkies are not the only food stuffs that remain flawless after months or years of sitting out: the Mcdonalds Happy Meal.
Fortunately, it is possible to enjoy a Hostess Twinkie sponge cake without a guilty conscience when you make it from scratch. Check out this cool recipe for vegan Twinkie.