In all things, moderation. This includes the delicious Twinkie.

That last image would make a cool poster.

I had a deep fried twinkie at a fish and chips place in park slope. it was overpriced, but ....damn, it was tasty.

My brother's vegetarian (ex)wife used to snack on twinkies...she'd never read the ingredient list and had no idea that beef tallow was an ingredient.

I would love to read someone's description of an attempt to bake twinkies at home.

Believe it or not, Spy magazine did that as a feature way those many years ago. They actually asked 5 or 6 top chefs to re-create the Twinkie, and then taste-tested the results.

I'm Googling for Twinkie + Spy Magazine, and found this Twinkie Report, but that's not the whole story. I do see that I am not making it up, because posters on Fark and MetaFilter have also mentioned the story. It was hilarious. Damn, I wish I'd had enough foresight to save all my Spy Magazines.

I owned that Spy Magazine, and kept it for years. Sad to say, it got purged in one of my many moves.

I remember this: they (and I think the "they" here were Jane & Michael Stern of "Roadfood" fame) recruited several of NYC's hottest chefs to recreate Twinkies in their own kitchen. The variations were pretty interesting, if mostly unTwinkie-like. I recall that they judged the creations on several attributes, two of which (though I can't remmember the terms) were:
- heft, because the Twinkie has a curious dense weight for its tiny size
- surface tactility, because the Twinkie has a sweet, tacky surface stickiness without which it is not authentic.

They (and again, I think this was the Sterns) submitted their own creation made with as much of the Twinkie's full ingredient listing as they could muster, though I think tallow was unavailable and they substituted suet. This entry was judged too unbearably meaty-tasting to consume.

The report also featured a bunch of Twinkie experiments (ah, I see now that the experiments are in the link), which appear to be the only part republished on the web. Sad. Some of those recipes would be in vogue right now.

You're absolutely right. Thomas Keller would be first in line to offer a haute Twinkie on his menu.