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I wanted to ignore the deep-fried Twinkie.

I wanted to believe that the deep-fried Twinkie, though invented in Brooklyn, was beneath the contempt of all
 New Yorkers, the cursed offspring of an Englishman with a professional-grade fryer and too much time on his
 hands.

But, lately, as headlines paint a picture of a nation that has gone deep-fried Twinkie mad -- "Fair's Newest
 Scream: Fried Twinkies"; "There's Gold in Those Fried Twinkies"; "Fried Twinkie Fad Hits Arkansas" -- I can
 ignore the deep-fried Twinkie no longer.

"They sold like hotcakes -- and hotcakes sell pretty damn well," said Chris Mullen, who sold the Twinkies in
 California and Washington. "We couldn't cook 'em fast enough."

The inventor of the deep-fried Twinkie -- a humble (though classically trained) Brit chef named Chris Sell --
 doesn't know where it will end.

"Every time I think it's died down, it flares back up again," Sell said the other day at The Chip Shop, where
 the deep-fried Twinkie debuted a year ago.

It began as a quest for the perfect dessert. Scottish fish-and-chip shops had already earned a respected
 culinary reputation for the deep-fried Mars bar, so Sell needed something better -- and that, of course, led
 to batter.

"We're English, so we batter and fry everything," he said.

It may be the perfect dessert: The fish-and-chip batter gives a slightly salty crust that cuts the overly sweet
 Hostess cake, while the deep-frying liquefies the "cream" and distributes it throughout the Twinkie.

One fan actually sees the deep-fried Twinkie as a metaphor for the immigrant experience. "Deep-frying is very
 English while the Twinkie is uniquely American," said Seth Kamil, who runs Big Onion Walking Tours. "It's the
 'melting pot' myth in one delicious bite."

Mullen faithfully sticks to Sell's recipe, but Phil Dickson, who sold them at the Arkansas State Fair,
 deep-freezes before deep-frying. The result is a Twinkie-on-a-stick that's a distant cousin of Baked Alaska.

Kamil is worried that imitators will churn out so many inferior copies that no one will even remember the
 greatness of the original -- a phenomenon that ruined pizza, doughnuts and even the bagel. But Sell isn't
 worried.

"In the end, the Twinkie is Hostess's product, so I can't be held responsible," Sell said. "Besides, I'm on to
 bigger and better."

Ah, that would be Sell's new dessert: a deep-fried Hostess cherry pie. "They're already deep-fried, so we'll
 batter it and deep-fry it again. It will be brilliant!"

Spoken like a true Englishman.

--30--