Ribbon Winning Recipes

I've been entering the Ohio State Fair baking competitions for the past 5 years. And in those 5 years I've been lucky to acquire not 1 or 2, but 15 ribbons. 15! That still blows my mind.

Cookies dominate the winnings, but I've had luck with cupcakes, cake, jam, and even BBQ sauce! And if you guys have been around awhile, you've probably seen every one of those recipes already. Practically everything I've entered into the fair I've posted on here first. But in case you're new to this neck of the woods, or just forgot what we've done here, I've put together a handy list of all the ribbon winning recipes to wow your friends and family with! (And maybe also so I can remember what the heck I've entered already.)

So without further ado... Drum roll please!

The Third Place Winners:

Mocha Cupcakes: I love my go-to chocolate cupcakes. (*spoiler alert* The secret ingredient is mayo. Yep. The kind you slather on a sandwich.) Topped with silky, fluffy Swiss meringue buttercream flavored with cocoa and espresso powders, it's a delicious little pick me up.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies: Chewy, crackly cookies with a kick of chipotle. They'll warm you up on a cold winter's day.

Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies: Little pillows of peanut buttery goodness. They're quick and easy and oh so delicious.

The Second Place Winners:

Decorated Cookies: I've won 2nd with decorated cookies twice now. Once with these princess themed birthday cookies and once with a baby shower theme. This sugar cookie recipe is the most used (i.e., butter stained) in my entire Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. (Note: link goes to a very, very early post for Valentine's Conversation Heart Cookies. Don't judge the terrible ramble-y writing and awful pictures.. It was only my 5th post. ever.)

White Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies: I still think of these as my rockstar cookies. I had coworkers hug me after eating these cookies. I think that says it all.

Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookies: These were my favorite "easy" chocolate chip cookies. Moist and chewy--they were my go to. That is until I found the next recipe.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Cream Cheese: Like the chocolate chips with pudding, these babies have a secret ingredient that keeps them moist and chewy and fresh for days. Cream cheese replaces the egg, so these bad boys are good for those with egg allergies! And just as delicious as those without. They're my new go-to easy chocolate chips.

Honey Chipotle BBQ Sauce: My first foray into the BBQ sauce category. After making this recipe, I haven't bought bottled BBQ sauce since. There's a jar of this in my fridge as we speak, and I seriously want to slather it on everything in sight.

French Toast and Bacon Cupcakes: Possibly the most looked at post on my entire blog. These babies are multiple winners at both the Ohio State Fair and the very first Cupcake Camp.

And last but not least, The First Place (Blue Ribbon) Winners:

Cherry Jam: Okay so this picture and the link are for Strawberry Peach Jam. This is the one and only recipe I've made but never posted. However it's a variation of the S+P recipe: Follow recipe and ingredient list for S+P jam substituting cherries (stems and pits removed) for the other fruit, reducing the vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract) down to 1 teaspoon and adding 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract as well. The rest is pretty much the same.

Vanilla Cupcake: Light and fluffy and perfectly delicate, sometimes you just need simplicity. My fair version used a light lemon buttercream instead of vanilla, but the cupcake recipe is the same. For the lemon frosting, substitute 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract for the almond extract.

Chocolate Chip Cookies: My very first blue ribbon! These are my go-to chocolate chip cookies. 2 kinds of flour, 2 kinds of sugar, and roughly a ton of chocolate chips, these are my ideal cookie. No other recipe I've come across compares.

And this year I added 2 more blue ribbons to my collection.

Lemon Lavender Scones: Other than the scones I took to the fair, I haven't shared a single one of these with another person. I want them all for myself. Sweet and lemony with a light floral finish, these are perfection.

Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake: I did change this up slightly from the posted recipe. Instead of 1 cup of water for the liquid, I used 1 cup of strong brewed coffee. I also frosted it with a simple chocolate ganache. You know, there's a tub of sour cream in my fridge just begging to be used up..

And now I'm on the quest for next years recipes, so keep an eye out. I've got a little more than 10 months until the next fair, so you might see a few more potential winners popping up around here!

My Fair Lady 2013 - A Trip to the Ohio State Fair

With the Labor Day weekend nearly upon us, summer is officially winding down. While I'm not really ready to let summer go yet, I thought I'd give you a look back on the best part of every summer for me. Fair time!

I've gone to the Ohio State Fair for years. The food, the animals, the concerts, the food, the.. um.. interesting characters. (Although I was a bit disappointed in the shortage of mullets this year. Especially the family mullet.) Oh, did I mention the food? Anything you'd ever dream of frying, or have never even thought about frying are all on display. And don't forget the vast array of things on a stick--like chocolate covered bacon. And make sure you grab an ice cream cone from the dairy building while you check out the butter cow. (It's exactly what it sounds like: a cow sculpted from butter.)

This year I went with my best friend and her family, wandering through the animal barns, the petting zoo, hitting the rides in Kiddie Land, and snapping tons of pictures along the way.

Not sure he's really enjoying the shearing process.

The baby animals are always a big hit. I just want to take this baby cow home with me! And the piglets! Oh. My. Gosh.

Pigs! I just love pigs. I don't know why.

But I think my favorite is the horse barn. Such beautiful animals.

And of course, my absolute favorite part of the fair, and my favorite part of the whole summer--the baking competitions. Once I realized I could combine my [over]competitiveness with my love of baking, that was it. The quest for ribbons has been insatiable. You'd think I was competing on Top Chef with how serious I take this competition. This was my 5th year entering, and once again, it didn't disappoint.

Another 2 blue ribbons for scones and chocolate cake to add to my collection! That takes me up to a grand total of 15 ribbons over 5 years. Not too shabby!

It was also a good year for my baking friends too. Timmura (who I've done several Cupcake Camps and previous fairs with) not only placed 2nd with her Root Beer Float cupcakes,

but also took a first place AND a best in show for her Chocolate Stout Cupcakes! Yay! I may or may not have fangirled a little bit and took like 20 pictures of them.

It was another great time this year! (Even though they were out of the Maple Bacon ice cream in the dairy building the day I went--the ONE thing I wanted to try this year! Oh well. I'll just have to make my own.) I'm already on the quest for next year's recipe (I'm thinking pie this time!) and I can't wait until it's summer all over again!

Stay tuned-- I'll be posting a complete list of all my ribbon winning recipes soon!

French Toast and Bacon Cupcakes

It seems bacon is the new black. Once known merely for its place on the breakfast plate, bacon is quickly overtaking every meal. It’s popping up everywhere—not just in our sandwiches or on our baked potatoes anymore. It’s showing up in our appetizers, our dinners, and even our desserts and drinks. (Bacontini anyone?) There’s bacon mayonnaise, bacon salt, bacon flavored toothpicks. There are even entire cookbooks dedicated to the smoked slab. It seems only right to embrace this bacon renaissance (Bacon-aissance?) with some bacon flavored cupcakes.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Can we be honest for a minute? I made these cupcakes for the first time weeks ago in my testing, thinking to myself, “These are great! I can’t wait to share these!!” With every intention of blogging them right away, I started testing for my chocolate cupcakes. And testing. And testing. And along the way, I kind of forgot to write about these Snickerdoodles. Then came time to bake them for the fair—another great opportunity to write about how yummy these were! And again, they got pushed aside. So now here I am, more than a week after the most recent baking, and I’ve again completely forgotten just about everything I wanted to say about them. I’m sorry little Snickerdoodles. You deserve better than this.

The Chocolate Cupcake Trials

After a spectacular fail in Round 1 and a disappointing Round 2, my chocolate cupcake attempt at Total Fair Domination was not looking so good. I still hadn’t found a recipe that didn’t sink completely or taste overly dry, let alone figured out what kind of frosting to top it with. Time to hit the cookbooks for inspiration and get back into the kitchen for another round. Or two?

S'mores Cupcakes (Redux)

With my cookie recipes in the bag, it’s time to move on to testing cupcake recipes. I know 1 for sure. The other two (chocolate and “other flavor”) are still up in the air. I’ve got ideas, but nothing seems to be working out the way I envision it. With only days left, it’s getting down to the wire, and I’m starting to worry a bit. My biggest challenge? Trying to find a whole new chocolate cake recipe that I like as much as my Go-To—which I can’t use.

Mini Throwdown: Peanut Butter Cookies (Part 2)

After my not-quite-successful attempt at Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, the search has been on for the perfect recipe to take to the fair. Not that the first attempt was terrible—it just made me realize what kind of peanut butter cookie I was after. It’s not the thin, almost crispy, peanut butter puddle I got from the first round. My ideal cookie is the one I pictured in my mind before pulling those disappointments out of the oven; that beautiful, thick, chewy, glorious cookie bursting with flavor. So Round 1 of my Peanut Butter Cookie Throwdown was a wash—those would never be a contender for Operation Total Fair Domination—but now that I knew what I wanted, maybe Round 2 would be more fruitful.

Mini Throwdown: Peanut Butter Cookies (Part 1)

There’s only about 2 weeks left before I have to enter my cookies into the fair. For the most part, I think I’ve got my recipes figured out. (For the cookies at least. I’ve still got a long way to go for cupcakes. And a whole extra week to work on them.) I’ve used my recipe for the Molasses category time and time again, and I absolutely love it. As for Oatmeal? I’m going with the one I took to work that had everyone stopping me all night to rave about them. That only leaves Peanut Butter to narrow down. I’ve got a recipe that I like, that I could use in a pinch, but nothing that I absolutely LOVE. Time to start testing some alternatives. Time to have my own little version of a Throwdown!

(Blue Ribbon) Chocolate Chip Cookies

Nothing evokes memories of childhood like a good chocolate chip cookie. Especially when it's still warm from the oven. There's no greater thing in the world than the taste of a fresh chocolate chip cookie, with it's still melty chocolate insides, and a tall glass of milk to wash it all down. It's a simple comfort in a sometimes crazy world. It's where most bakers get their start, in the kitchen at an early age, helping to mix up a batch of chocolate chip cookies on a rainy day. And no matter how you like your cookies, there's the perfect recipe out there somewhere. Soft and chewy? Thin and crispy? Somewhere in between? No problem. It's all about finding the right one for you.

My Fair Lady

Check out the recipe for my Sugar Cookies, and the recipe for my Chocolate Chip Cookies!

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I’ve been going to the Ohio State Fair every year for most of my life. I think it’s mainly because I’m a sucker for fair food. Deep fried junk? Yes please. Something on a stick? All the easier to walk with it to the next food place. Deep fried food on a stick? Now you’re totally speaking my language. Every 5 feet there’s another heart attack tempting you with its promise of overindulgent goodness. I can almost feel my arteries clogging at the thought of a deep fried Twinkie, but at least I’d die happy. There’s deep fried everything if you look hard enough: Twinkies, candy bars, Oreos, Cheesecake, Strawberry Shortcake, pickles, corn dogs, even macaroni and cheese, although I’m not sure how that works. The newest deep fried tasty treat? Deep fried Buckeyes; chocolate and peanut butter coated in a funnel cake-like batter and fried to a golden, melty goodness. Mmm. A total mess, but totally worth it. And even though I’ve been coming to the fair for 20-something years, I’ve never once thought of actually participating in it, other than the whole eating my way through it thing. Competing in the fair was something farmers did with cows, sheep, and chickens. I don’t have livestock. What did I know about being in the fair? It wasn’t until I walked through the Creative Arts building last year and actually looked at the entries in the baking competitions that I really thought anything about it. It wasn’t just pies and canned vegetables. There were cookies and cakes, muffins and brownies--all things I felt I could do. Okay, so maybe I might know a little something about this fair stuff. Maybe I could enter in the fair. Maybe even win something. Ah who am I kidding; I’d probably just forget about it until I was back at the fair next year.


Well I didn’t really forget. It was always in the back of my mind, just floating around. But I don’t really do things like that. I’d never competed in anything before, much less a baking competition. There’s no way I would win. These people that enter the fair, they know what they’re doing. I’m just fumbling around. It wasn’t until Cupcake Camp that I really got into the competitive spirit. I convinced myself that if I was going to compete in something, I wasn’t going to take the safe route. I was going to go all out and push my own boundaries. And it paid off. I won the category I entered even though I doubted that I would stand a chance. But no matter if I had won or lost, I was bitten by the competition bug at Cupcake Camp. I needed to enter more! That’s the thing about me. I have a terrible competitive streak. I have to win. Or I have to at least try my hardest to win, even if I don’t end up actually winning. I’m competitive with people who don’t even realize they’re competing. In things that shouldn’t even be a competition. I always have been that way. And once I got the taste for baking competitions, well there’s no turning back now. I’m a competition junkie. Competing in the fair? Sign me up. For the State Fair. There is no county level when you’re living by “go big or go home.”

I knew right away I wanted to enter my beloved sugar cookies into the decorated cookie category. Looking last year at the winners in the category, I immediately thought (in a totally not I’m-better-than-you mean kind of way), “I can do better than that.” So I set out to make the best, cutest sugar cookies I had ever made. These were going to be absolutely perfect! Well. Maybe not absolutely perfect, but I hopefully could at least find 6 really good ones of the bunch to take to judging! I decided on a Princess Birthday theme since I had bought cutters in the shapes of a cake, a present, and a tiara, and I was dying to find a reason to use them. I even had my design ideas all sketched out. 2 and a half days, 30 cookies, 3 colors, and some luster dust later, I had some pretty cute cookies I was feeling fairly good about. There were some in the bunch that weren’t so fantastic though. I tried to rush along the drying of my icing by putting them into an oven at 175F, and some of my white turned a bit yellowish at the edges, but oh well. Those just wouldn’t come along for the ride. And I’ll remember that for next time.

I decided as I was registering my entries online that I would make chocolate chip cookies as well. I love my chocolate chip recipe, so I decided what the heck. I’ll give it a shot. The ones I actually took with me were thrown together at literally the last minute after a not so successful first batch (more on that later), but somehow the 2nd batch, the one I took to be judged, came out almost perfect. With only an hour left to get my cookies turned in, I was running around like crazy getting everything ready, and of course snapping a bunch of pictures. I managed to get them in on time, thankfully, and now there was nothing to do but sit and wait until I could go to the fair and find out how I did.

I finally got my chance on Thursday night to go with Boyfriend and Kelli. After a not-so-quick stop for some Deep Fried Buckeyes (those things were molten hot, and it was almost impossible to eat without a fork, which they didn’t give us..), we were off to the Creative Arts building to see the results. Walking down the immense glass cases towards the cookies, I spotted my sugar cookies at the very bottom.


Check it out!! 2nd place!!! Not bad at all! I got excited and started squealing and jumping up and down when Boyfriend was like, “Hey. Hey look!” and pointed a little further up in the case.


HOLY CRAP! FIRST PLACE!! I WON!!!! I WON AT THE STATE FAIR!! And for chocolate chip cookies! The category I thought everyone would enter because it’s the easiest. The category I almost didn’t enter myself. The category that had to be thrown together at the last minute and almost didn’t make it here! A blue ribbon! HELL YEAH!

All my squealing and jumping up and down attracted a bit of attention… The director of the entire Creative Arts competition came over to talk and to take my picture with my cookies! (Which I’m sure looked fantastic since I wasn’t even wearing makeup and I had expected it to rain at some point, so I didn’t bother with my hair at all…) I still can’t believe I placed in both categories I entered in, my first time competing! Yay!! All night long I would randomly just let out a squeal of excitement whenever I thought about it again. I’m pretty close to letting out a crazy squeal right now! I’m definitely competing again next year, and in more than just 2 categories. Looking online at past winners, and seeing all their names again this year in so many different categories, I realized it’s time for some fresh blood. Whether they realize it or not, the gauntlet has been thrown by those same 6-8 people that win in 15 different categories year after year. My competitive spirit won’t let it stand without a challenge. So to any Ohio bakers out there; this is your call to arms. I’m ready to take them down, now who’s with me? Their tyrannous rein will come to-- oops. Sorry. I got a little carried away again. *Deep breath* Let’s just move on to some pictures of fun fair stuff while I calm down a bit.


Okay I’m better now. I had a great time at the fair, and can’t wait until next year! And don't forget to check out the recipe of my BLUE RIBBON WINNING Chocolate Chip Cookies!!

And just because they're so pretty. Here's some more of my 2nd place Sugar Cookies to look at!