How does this actually work?
The woman who won this award still doesn’t fully know how her own recipe works.
That’s not a knock on her. It’s the whole story.
The Invention
In 2016, Fried Jell-O took Best Taste at the Big Tex Choice Awards, the State Fair of Texas’s annual fried food competition.
It was submitted by Ruth Hauntz, a concessionaire who’d been working the fair for 28 years by the time she won. She was 82 years old.
Twenty-eight years at the fair. One award. One dessert nobody expected to work.
What’s Actually Inside It
Classic cherry-flavored Jell-O, breaded in panko crumbs, fried until golden, dusted with powdered sugar, and served with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
The State Fair’s own description put it best: the perfect amount of crunch to complement the jiggle.
That’s the trick. Jell-O is not solid. It is not supposed to survive hot oil. Somehow, breaded and frozen first, it does, and it still jiggles when you cut into it.
Even She Doesn’t Know How It Works
Here’s the part most fair recaps skip.
Hauntz told a local Dallas news station she genuinely didn’t know what holds the Jell-O together once it’s inside the fryer. In her own words, she wasn’t sure “what that thing is that holds it together.” She just knew the process: freeze it, tuck it inside the pastry, fry it to a golden crisp.
Twenty-eight years of concession experience, and the science behind her own winning dish is still a bit of a mystery to the person who invented it.
Somehow, that makes it more convincing, not less.
What It Beat
Fried Jell-O won Best Taste that year. Most Creative went to State Fair Cookie Fries, chocolate chip and sprinkle cookies shaped like crinkle-cut French fries, served with strawberry or milk chocolate dipping sauce. That entry came from Isaac Rousso, a seven-year Big Tex finalist who’d won the previous year’s Most Creative with a Smoky Bacon Margarita.
The semifinalist field that year included Caribbean Pineapple Korn-a-Copia, a Bacon Burger Dog Slider on a Stick, Pulled Pork Funyun Dings, and something called Injectable Great Balls of BBQ.
Against all of that, a simple bowl of cherry Jell-O, fried, still won on taste alone.
The Jiggle
Fried Jell-O isn’t complicated. It’s not trying to be clever. It’s a dessert built by someone who’d already spent nearly three decades learning what fairgoers actually want to eat.
Texas didn’t need a food scientist to win this one. It just needed 28 years of practice and a woman willing to fry something nobody thought would hold together.