Powdered Sugar

- Location: Longhorn Food Court - 1901 Rio Grande St. - @  Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd 
- Hours: Tuesday – Saturday: 12 - 8 PM
- Facebook: Powdered Sugar
- Cuisine: Dessert


Amber Glowski is a social work student at UT.  Although she wasn’t technically in the food industry prior to opening Powdered Sugar in August of 2010, she brings up a good point: “Food has always been a part of me.  I’ve been eating and grocery shopping and cooking most of my life, so food is something everybody’s around no matter what.”  She bought her 1964 Shasta trailer from Kristin Gunn, who formerly operated Sugarstar, her ‘Martha Meets Metallica’ cupcake business out of the same trailer. 

In Amber’s words, “I started this business with an observation.  It’s such a piece of Austin culture – this isn’t a big thing in other big cities in Texas, Austin has it first.  I tried food trailers and I realized no one was doing funnel cake.  To me it seemed obvious: people are used to eating funnel cakes out of a truck.  Plus there is no where to get funnel cake year round – you can’t go to a store and get a funnel cake.”

Amber remembers being about 7 years old and eating her first funnel cake where she grew up at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo but not all of her customers were raised with funnel cake fun.  “It’s fun to find people who’ve never had one in their life that are 45-50 years old.  The funnel cake also spans generations from little children who are so excited or more mature people who have grown up with funnel cake – that grew up with it in the 50s and 60s – it’s fun to see their reaction.”  Amber reports the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo sold some 100,000 funnel cakes earlier in March of 2010. 

The funnel cake was traditionally made in cast iron skillet over a burner.  It is Dutch in origin and outside of the being well known as a ‘fair’ food, it is still very popular in Pennsylvania where large Dutch and Amish communities exist.  With Amber’s vision, Austinite’s can now relive the excitement and wonder of fair time funnel cake by visiting her “Powdered Sugar” trailer year round.