How Sweet It Is
INSIDE A 100-YEAR-OLD brick building tucked between the Cattle Barn and the Poultry & Rabbit exhibits, within hurling distance of the glittering Midway and the thick, buttery air that hangs over the boulevard of deep-fried concessions—here, 185 home cooks participating in the Indiana State Fair’s Culinary Arts competition are working the room like rock stars.
They paid their $30–$50 entry fees, filled in recipe templates listing prep time and precise measurements (the noncommittal “pinch” and “dash” having been outlawed a few years back), and delivered their haul by the hatchback-full, each item balanced on the required sturdy white disposable plate or foil-covered cardboard round.
Now, it’s time to bask in the sweet limelight. For these two sweltering weeks in August, their pies, cakes, cookies, brownies, yeast rolls, quick breads, jams, preserves, and candies crowd the air-conditioned Indiana Arts Building, encased in vintage glass cabinets or bagged and tagged like forensic evidence on long tables. Some of them sport first-, second-, and third-place ribbons, or the coveted purple satin Best of Show rosette like the one that—if I may be so bold—I dream of hanging on my own refrigerator door some day.
Not that it will be easy.
That is mainly because a good number of the pies—between 18 and 23 in a typical year—wear Barbara Headlee’s signature lattice top, uniformly scalloped with her trusty red-handled Cake Boss pastry cutter.
A county over and a month earlier, the North Salem school-bus driver was meticulously weaving crusts by the dozen and stacking them
