Nothing fair about this Fair!

It's Fair time in Lynden...something I look forward to every year. Even though it's the same each year, the smells of greasy curly fries, the sights of rides and booths, the taste of poffertjes and moowiches, the sounds of happy kids...it brings back such good memories of roaming the Fair every year, taking everything in. I'm a Fair diehard! :)

This year I decided to participate in the Fair in another way--entering some of my cookies and baked goods! With a blog name of 'Sweet Things', I thought I'd better ;) There are tons of categories for baking submissions alone, so I thought 'why not?'

I decided to combine the design of two Barbie cakes I made this year and submit a very girly princess cake in the 'special occasion decorated cake' category...and I won first place!

One of my favorite cookie recipes comes from our church cookbook--Chewy Double Chocolate Cookies. With a name like that, how can they not be good?! I submitted those as well and after my sister scoped it out, she told me I had won a first place for that submission too. Score!

About a month ago, my mom sent me a link to the Fair website, where they were promoting their Centennial Year Celebration. Part of that celebration included a Centennial Cake Contest. Just for entering, you would receive a free entrance admission into the Fair, so again, I thought, 'why not?' This cake brought me a little more trouble than I was expecting. I've never done any fondant work, but thought this would be a fun time to try. Turns out fondant's a little more touchy, sticky, and troublesome than it looks ;) The cakes were going to be judged on how well they matched the theme "Endless Memories", so I decided to go with Fair colors (white fondant w ith blue stripes), a fondant '100' on the top, a Fair ribbon, and a banner with the saying 'Endless Memories. While I'm not super proud of the way it turned out, a letter I received in the mail today told me I had placed in the top 5 in the contest...winning 2 more entrance admissions and VIP tickets to the Centennial Celebration party on Friday!

It was a busy week last week getting these two cakes, plus 2 more cakes (more on those in another post) done, but it was well worth it!

Hope everyone has a wonderful week...I'm going to enjoy every minute of my Fair-going! :)

Rianne