Have you ever wanted to make your very own Pokey Stix? NO? Well I’m going to let your lazy butt in on a little secret—you should, because they’re ridiculously easy to make. Some might say they’re even better than the original. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I didn’t even know Pokey Stix existed until a couple weeks ago when they were mentioned in an Onward State post. Given that I’m a townie, my friends were shocked and appalled to say the least. Apparently it’s a well-known fact that if you are inebriated and looking for something to eat, you order Pokey Stix from Gumby’s pizza. I was intrigued, a recipe was found, and the Pokey Stix making commenced.

For homemade Pokey Stix (aka. delicious greasy cheese bread) YOU WILL NEED:

• 1 package pre-made pizza dough
• 4 tablespoons parmesan cheese (or not, this shit be expensive…unless you use the Kraft powder version which is ok but not recommended as I’m 99.9% sure it’s not real cheese)
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 cup margarine

Authors note: If you’re feeling really ambitious, the original recipe calls for homemade pizza dough. However if you’re like me, you’re lazy, and want to spend as little time possible making food that’s destined to be consumed by a gaggle of drunks.

Now simply follow the steps to achieve greatness:

First, you’ll need to roll out your pizza dough, which can be tough without a rolling pin. To stay in the spirit (and because it’s all we could find) a stray beer bottle was located and used thusly:

If you aren’t boss enough to use discarded trash as a rolling pin, you can stretch the dough up in the air. It’s important that the dough is fairly thin and even the whole way around (you don’t want random raw pockets). At this point you could take a shot at throwing it up into the air like your favorite Italian pizza maker, at the risk of adding a bit of “Italian flair” to your ceiling.

Proper stretching technique, or, lack thereof.

After your dough is ready, mix up all of your spices and stir them into the margarine. Melt this mixture in the microwave, until it’s easy to spread. Spread your poor man’s garlic butter all over your dough, and don’t be shy. At this point you might want to think of channeling the spirit of Paula Deen (I say spirit because by the time this is published she most likely will be dead from all that butter and fat). I was successful in doing so, and ended up using almost double the amount of margarine to cover the entire width of dough. It really works. Just make sure that there are no virgin spaces of pizza dough showing. Fat is the most essential ingredient when making homemade Pokey Stix.

With the spreading finished, mix the mozzarella and parmesan cheese in a bowl, and sprinkle liberally over your prepped dough. At this point you should be getting excited, because soon all of that cheese will be creating fat deposits in your thighs.

Place your finished creation in a 400 degree oven, and bake for 8-12 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when it looks like this:

All you’ve got to do now is sit back and let your stix cool (or not), and cut them into imitation Pokey Stix shapes.

In my opinion these Pokey Stix were delicious, but it all means nothing if they can’t compare to the real thing. To see just how well the homemade Pokey Stix could stand up to the original, some official Pokey Stix from Gumby’s were ordered, and then compared. Fortunately I had some friends to help me out: Meghin Moore, Mara Kern, Alicia Thomas, and Ali Fogarty.

The results of our comparison, is described in inappropriate sound bites below:

Mara: “This [the homemade stick] one’s bigger.”

Alicia: “Size matters.”

Mara: “The homemade is less greasy, which is a good thing.”

Ali: “I’m just here for the free food.”

Alicia: “The homemade one is cheesier, but Gumby’s has more seasoning. I don’t know if seasoning or cheese is more important, but they’re good!”

Mara: “Ok, I’m trying to be serious. I thought that the Gumby’s might be better, but now that both of them are at room temperature they’re pretty equal. coughing and choking on Gumby’s version This is dry as shit.”

Meghin: “I think the homemade ones are less dry.”

Mara: “You can poke me with your Pokey Stick.”

As you can see, eating Pokey Stix is a serious business, and one thing seemed unanimous: we all liked the homemade Pokey Stix better. Now if you STILL weren’t thinking about making these yourself, hopefully our consensus will make you think otherwise. Not only were the homemade Pokey Stix bigger and tastier than Gumby’s (in our opinion) they were also a lot cheaper to make.

We spent less than $15 total on the ingredients to make our own stix, and the 16” order (the same amount) of real Pokey Stix cost around $17. That may not seem like a big difference, but once you’ve bought the ingredients you still should have some left over to make EVEN MORE Pokey Stix whenever you want. If I still haven’t convinced you to make them then may God have mercy upon your soul.

You can find the homemade Pokey Stix recipe that we used here.

Special thanks to Kevin Horne for hosting ladies night at his apartment.