Here's a timely treat:  Lara Ferroni has a new cookbook out featuring home-baked versions of childhood junk foods. First on the list are "Vanilla Snack Cakes," a.k.a. a Twinkie by any other name.

Vanilla Snack Cakes

Ingredients:

3/4 cup white spelt or all-purpose flour
1/4 cup ground millet or cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 egg whites
1/3 cup cane sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons safflower oil
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 batch (about 1 cup) Snack Cake Creme (recipe online here)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a canoe-style snack cake pan. If you don't have a snack cake pan, you can use 4-ounce loaf pans. Alternatively, create your own molds out of foil by shaping double thicknesses of aluminum foil around a spice bottle and setting the individual foil pieces next to each other in a cake pan.

Sift the spelt flour, ground millet flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside.

In a dry mixer bowl with dry beaters, beat the egg whites until stiff, about 2 minutes.
Transfer the beaten egg whites to a clean bowl and set aside.

In the same mixer bowl, add the sugar, honey, water, oil, egg yolks, and vanilla and beat for 1 minute. Add the flour mixture and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes. Fold in half of the beaten egg whites; once the first half is fully incorporated, fold in the second half.

Pour the batter into the prepared molds, filling them 2/3 of the way full. Bake until golden, 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking. Cool the cakes in the pan for at least 20 minutes, then remove to a wire rack and cool completely before filling with the Snack Cake Creme.

To fill the cakes, use a skewer or chopstick to poke 2 holes partially through the snack cake from the bottom, and wiggle around to hollow out some space. Use a piping bag fitted with a Bismarck (#230) tip or a very small star-shaped tip to fill the cake with the Snack Cake Creme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vYj0E2Hr0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzaQjS1JstY