Homemade Corn Dogs

My husband is a firefighter which means that he's gone 2-3 nights a week.  As easy as it would be to just throw some Marie Callender frozen dinners in the microwave for me and the kids, I vowed a long time ago that I would do my best to feed my kids real food, even when it's just us.  (This actually started when my oldest was just over a year old, so it really was tempting to just microwave a TV dinner for me and let her eat her baby food.)  

Anyway, I'm always on the lookout for family/kid friendly recipes that are a breeze to make (mostly because it's just me juggling two kids and getting dinner on the table and evening is not an easy time in our house...)  I found this recipe for Homemade Corn Dogs from Pioneer Woman and, though I'm not a huge fan of (or expert at) deep frying, I knew my daughter loved corn dogs and if I could even remotely make these work, I would have at least one happy eater that night.

Classic Corn Dogs and Cheese-on-a-Stick (adapted from the Pioneer Woman)

Ingredients:

• 6 cups Bisquick (the original calls for Krusteaz and I also halved the recipe which was plenty for my kids and I.)
• 2 cups corn meal
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 6 cups water, add more if you need to thin the batter
• flour
• hot dogs
• cheese (I used plain old cheddar)
• chopsticks for the dogs, bamboo skewers for the cheese
• canola oil
• mustard and ketchup

1. Combine Bisquick and cornmeal in a large bowl.  Add eggs and water, adding more water as needed.  You want the batter to be slightly thick but not gloopy.  Ree suggests starting out with 4 cups and working your way up to 6+.
2. Insert chopsticks into hot dogs (these really do work and are easy to find at the grocery store) until they are 2/3 of the way in.  The same was suggested for the cheese, but I found that my cheese was breaking too easily so I just used bamboo skewers with the sharp tips cut off.  Also, when I started deep-frying the hot dogs, the batter just slid off. I found that if I dusted each with flour before I dropped them in the batter, the batter stayed on just fine when it went in the oil.
3. Heat canola oil over medium-high heat.  (Deep frying makes me incredibly nervous so I used my enormous Martha Stewart dutch oven and it worked perfectly.)  Drop in a bit of batter, which will start to sizzle immediately, but not burn or brown.
4. Dip the hot dogs into the batter and allow excess to drip off.  Carefully drop into the oil and use tongs to make sure it doesn't hit the bottom of the pan and stick.  Flip to ensure even browning.  It took me about 3-5 minutes each, but I had 2 going at a time.  When you dip the cheese, leave it in there as long as possible to allow the cheese to melt.

This was the most success I've had frying anything and they were so delicious!