Gluten Free Mini Corn Dog Bites

Hi, Friends!  I’m excited; today is my first day back to teaching!  I loved the class I taught last semester and am excited to be taking on more classes!  However, there are more important items on the agenda to discuss, like the Super Bowl!

The Super Bowl is almost here which kind of makes me a little bit sad because it marks the end of fun appetizer season.  Gone will be the weekends of cooking up fun new a little healthier homemade appetizers for Mr. Hungry and friends.  On the plus side, maybe I’ll get some real meal prep done on Sundays now.

One of Mr. Hungry’s absolute favorite snacks is corn dogs; he LOVES them.  He would happily buy the Costco box of corn dogs if I’d let him.  You guys must love them too, because, despite the less than stellar picture my homemade baked healthy corn dogs, they have been a Hungry Hobby hit since I put the recipe up.

I love them too; I practically lived on them (and almond butter banana sandwiches) in Grad School.  Sadly, though, they are not gluten-free, yeast-free, or egg -free and therefore not Mr. Hungry food sensitivity friendly.

Sometimes we buy the gluten-free turkey corn dogs from TJ’s, but it’s like five bucks for four tiny corn dogs.  Makes me sad to see him savoring the four corn dogs like gold, so I figured it was time he had a mini corn dog feast!

Like all great appetizers, these were SUPER easy to make and a huge hit.  I’m not the only one who thinks so; there are tons of recipes out there for mini corn dogs.  However, I wanted to try to make these as healthy and as easy as possible.

I looked at various cornbread mixes, and I chose Bob’s Red Mill because it has predominately whole grains (check out this how to spot a healthy carbohydrate post) in its ingredient list and also has very limited sugar.

I figure you’re going to dunk these in ketchup and mustard so they don’t need to have tons of added sugar or be super sweet.  I chose to use butter because corn dogs need to be buttery, end of story.  I like to use Kerrygold grass-fed Butter (I get mine from Costco, see benefits of grass-fed here).

I also made these two ways, once egg free with flax as a substitute and once with an egg.  The pictures are of the flax version; we liked that one better!  For the hot dogs I went with turkey because they were long and skinny, but you can use whatever nitrate free uncured hot dog you want.  (Check yo ingredients, make sure you can pronounce everything and picture it in your mind, and we are ready to go!)

With a super easy, yummy ingredient list these were just about as fun to make, eat, and photograph as I could stand.  In fact, I made two batches, that’s 48 mini corn dogs! We froze at least half of them so now Mr. Hungry has a pretty good stash of corn dogs the next time the craving hits!

Despite the Cardinals sad loss, I’m excited about the game the commercials and the halftime show. You know what else the Super Bowl marks, the beginning of basketball season (yes I know it already started but in my mind one sports ends and the next starts) which are my favorite game to watch, you know I love my Wildcats!  I also love ketchup, like a lot!

I could probably dive in bowls of ketchup, mustard, and barbecue sauce.  At least it’s not the Nacho cheese dip I used to annihilate when I went to the U of A basketball games.

I’m not sure if I could eat that now, but that’s okay because I ate enough of it in college to last me a lifetime.  I’m going out on a limb, and I’m going to go ahead and say that ketchup, although sugary, is a better/healthier obsession than Nacho dip. Mr. Hungry still loves Nacho dip, but when it comes to these bites, it’s all about the mustard for him.

For two bites (recipe makes 24):

[Tweet “Mini Corn Dog Bites, a Super Bowl snack you can’t go wrong with! via @hungryhobby #glutenfree #dairyfree #yeastfee”]

Let’s take a poll, are you team ketchup, mustard, neither or split?