Everything ends up here eventually, but Made in Brooklyn is a column exploring native, born-and-bred borough creations.

Deep Fried Twinkies
Photos via Yelp users Jessica O. and Brian E.

One of America’s most heart-attack-worthy confections came about one fateful night at the British-themed Chip Shop in Park Slope, when a Twinkie was thrown into the deep fryer.

It was 2002. The local bodega had a surplus of Twinkies. And Brits love to fry things, the New York Times reported at the time. Long before rainbow bagels enraptured American tastebuds, the Brooklyn-bred deep-fried Twinkie wooed the nation.

“We were very bored one night. We were sitting around throwing everything into the deep fryer,” Chip Shop manager Suzanne Hackett told the Daily News on the origins of the decadent, calorie-filled treat. (Indeed, while an un-fried Twinkie has roughly 150 calories, once deep-fried that count jumps to more than 400.)

Chip Shop, which now has just an Atlantic Avenue location, served its $3 tempura-battered sponge cake covered in confectioner’s sugar and berry sauce. An immediate hit, the Brooklyn-born Twinkie recipe quickly began spreading around the U.S., becoming especially popular at fried-food-friendly carnivals and state fairs. While it may not have replaced apple pie, it is, for better or worse, now arguably an American classic.

Deep Fried Twinkies
The now-closed Park Slope Chip Shop. Photo by Kate Leonova for PropertyShark

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