The Kansas State Fair has baking competitions that invite non-professional bakers to compete for (small) cash prizes and the sweet glory of being a domestic goddess/god. Last year I entered a couple of the cookie baking competitions, and had a lot of fun being a loser.

From last year’s experience I learned: all baking entries are on display in the Domestic Arts building for the entirety of the state fair, which is about two weeks. Even if you lose everyone can see your baked goods on display. This gave me a shittacular idea for this year.

2013 Kansas State Fair Entries

Besides entering in a few cookie and chocolate cake competitions, I entered in two cake decorating competitions, and a special category called “The Governor’s Cookie Jar”.

Both of the cake decorating competitions had a theme of “Happy 100th Birthday, Kansas State Fair”. I didn’t want to break the rules, so I used the theme but twisted that shit a bit.

FYFI: Kansas is a conservative state with an ultra conservative governor, Sam Brownback. (Brownback has backwards views on gay marriage). I stuck with the theme, but picked social issues that: (1) are unresolved in Kansas, and (2) I thought I could depict in cake form.

Here are my two cakes. I used some fondant for the first time for the rainbows.

I’ve only been decorating cakes for less than a year. Act now and you could be making these amazing stick figures in no time!

This cake kept with the birthday-rainbow theme, but was also facing some recent religious inequality of the state, as well.

The other competition called “The Governor’s Cookie Jar”, was much more complicated. I had to have at least 9 varieties of cookies with 5 different types of cookies. If you are counting, that’s a fuckton of cookies! For this competition, you also have a 15 inched cubed area to decorate with the same theme: “Happy 100th Birthday, Kansas State Fair”. I haven’t been this crafty since I was in Girl Scouts, so that’s why it looks like a middle school girl made it.

The fun thing about this competition is that the winner gets to give their jar to the governor. I won’t win, but I have a lot of fun imaging Brownback’s face as I hand it to him. After I hand him the jar, we make a couple of jokes and share an equality cookie.

I tried to stick with the rainbow-birthday theme with the ten different kinds of cookies I made for this jar.

My favorite jar decoration is this Kansas Pride flag I made. I was in San Francisco about a month ago, saw lots of California pride flags, and thought Kansas could use a colorful upgrade.

Now I am off to drive about an hour from where I live in Kansas to drop off my creations to be judged by some old people. I think this will be uneventful, but a friend of mine said she is ready to bail me out of “state fair jail” if I get in trouble for the flag.

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