Tag: Blue Ribbon Recipe

Citrus Pound Cake

This Citrus Pound Cake brims with flavor thanks to orange zest, orange juice, and orange extract. Flour, eggs, sugar, and butter are its classic ingredients. They produce a texture that is both weighty and tender, two qualities every great pound cake should have. There’s something so rich, so decadent, so downright divine about a great pound cake, especially a perfectly baked one. Read on to learn just how special this cake is.

Best Cake Overall

This particular Citrus Pound Cake recipe, shared below, led to big blue ribbon bragging rights for baking enthusiast Candace Freeman of Minnesota. She won “Grand Cake of the Fair” with it at the Minnesota State Fair (2014). Grand Cake means it ranked best in its own category (pound cake), and best overall out of every type of cake entered. It’s a big deal for any home baker, especially at the Minnesota State Fair, where hundreds compete.

Candace credits the cookbook, “Scandinavian Classic Baking” by Pat Sinclair for the recipe (provided here with Pat’s permission). Candace notes the cookbook is a “must have.”

Baking Ideas, Tips

This recipe is the best. You can bake it in a variety of sizes and shapes; in differently-themed pans, a more classic tube style, or even an angel food cake pan. Just be sure not to overfill the pan you use. Plus, adjust the baking time as needed.
Grease the pan well. We followed Candy’s tip to not miss a single spot, and used butter. Get every corner and crevice to help your cake come out clean, and without any damage.
For the holidays we baked this in a seasonal bundt pan and finished it with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.
A glaze would also taste great, if that’s your preference.
Store leftovers in an airtight container.
If you love pound cake, try this divine dessert using a pound cake and custard as pie filling.

Citrus Mini Bundt Cakes

Bake this and it will become your go-to pound cake recipe as it has ours.

-Cyndi

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles: this award-winning recipe is a delicious, fun spin on classic snickerdoodles, with cayenne, cocoa, and baking chocolate kicking up the heat and yum factor. You end up rolling the dough in sugar, cinnamon, cocoa powder, and sea salt, making the flavors bloom with your first bite. They’re equally soft and chewy with a slightly crisp texture. One taste and you’ll know why it won top honors.

Choose Your Hotness

If you like a bit of heat in your baked goods, try these spicy snickerdoodles “as is” or choose your “hotness” by adjusting the cayenne (up or down). I actually added the cayenne because, frankly, I love all things spicy. You can certainly leave it out. Recipe credit goes to Kim Dame who won 1^st place in at the L.A. County Fair with this recipe. (Gold Medal Flour, best cookie contest, 2014)

Inspiration, Preparation

Kim’s Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles were inspired by a favorite coffee cream flavor. When she won, Kim shared that in preparation for the recipe contest, she baked a huge variety of cookies. The flavors ranged from coconut to molasses and orange. Her co-workers and friends were the lucky taste testers. They were most wowed by the Mexican Hot Chocolate, and the rest is history.

Bake these Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles. You’ll be wowed as well.

More for Chocolate Lovers

Double Chocolate S’More Sandwich Cookies, another L.A. County Fair winner

Potato Chip Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies, another must-make cookie recipe

Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies

Bake this blue ribbon winning cookie recipe for Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies. The recipe includes how to make your own kick-a$$ caramel sauce with sweetened condensed milk…in one easy step. Ultimately, you will create a treat so delicate and delightful, it will melt in your mouth. If you want a cookie that is confectionary level quality, this is it. And it’s easy with the step by instructions below. Hint, you simply boil 1 or 2 cans of Eagle Brand Sweetened condensed mil Recipe credit goes to Christine Montalvo who won at the Iowa State Fair with it in 2013.

We have made both a classic version.

And one with macadamia nuts instead. Both absolutely delish.

Dulce de leche, sometimes called “milk candy,” is defined as a traditional Argentinian dessert made by caramelizing sugar with milk. I first had it in the form of caramel ice cream. It is what makes this cookie extra special.

These blue ribbon winning Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies will be love at first bite. And if you want to try more Iowa State Fair winning cookies, simply search for Iowa in the search section. Here are two of our favorites: one, a s’more themed one, the other homemade macarons! Both are 1st place winning cookies also!

Enjoy!

-Cyndi

Potato Chip Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

These melt-in-your-mouth Potato Chip Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies are an award winning cookie. They won first place, top honors indeed, at the San Diego County Fair. With some potato chips and a few pantry staples, you can easily recreate these at home. They’ll taste like something off a high-end patisserie menu.

Recipe credit and blue ribbon bragging rights go to Alberta Dunbar of San Diego. She won the 2014 Gold Medal Flour Cookie Contest for this crazy good cookie creation. There are some home bakers out there who bake year-round and practically non-stop. Alberta is one of them. I dare say she is legendary. She has more award ribbons than she can count. This recipe for Potato Chip Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies is a blue ribbon winner and will wow anyone who tries them. Get making these! You won’t regret it.

And if you are looking for more amazing sandwich cookies, check these s’more themed ones out, or simply search for sandwich cookies in the search field.

-Cyndi

Circus Crunch Cookies

This Circus Crunch Cookies recipe makes for a perfect sweet treat you can prepare in 15 minutes. Within an hour, you’ll have several dozen blue ribbon winning cookies on your hands. It makes a huge portion: about 50 cookies, so you’ll have plenty to freeze for later. In fact, I packaged and froze 6 each (in raw dough form) in several freezer bags and had fresh baked cookies at my fingertips for several weeks. You’ll want to keep this cookie recipe in heavy rotation.

Circus Crunch Cookies recipe credit goes to John Joseph Yanek who won with them at the 2014 Great Allentown Fair, 1st place in the Gold Medal Flour cookie contest we managed for several years. We’re guessing you’re going to go crazy for this cookie like we did.

Bake it great!

Cyndi

Blue Ribbon Lemon Meringue Pie

Quite a while back we tested some recipes in a vintage cookbook and discovered this fantastic Blue Ribbon Lemon Meringue Pie. The “cookbook” was more of a booklet but a wonderful recipe roundup, none the less. The publication was titled, “Great State Fair Recipes…A Collection of Minnesota State Fair Sweepstakes-Winning Recipes from 1906 to 1975.” What a find this gem was!

Cakes, cookies and breads (three highly popular categories at fairs) make up most of the booklet’s collection, all with Minnesota State Fair roots. We found the blue ribbon lemon meringue pie in the “church recipe” section. It is a tried and true recipe, sure to become a family favorite.

We tweaked the recipe a bit, using only shortening for the crust versus half butter and half lard, plus added salt to the filling. The pie came out perfectly.

That testing day was a year or two ago. Somehow the pics and recipe kept getting set aside instead of posted, so my apologies. Here it finally is!

If you love lemon and meringue, this is a great “go to” recipe. For another citrus sweet treat, check out this other favorite of our here. It is an epic recipe and also quite easy to make.

One last note, if you are one to make MANY pies at a time, which many of you are, I now have a recipe that makes 40 pie crusts. Yes it’s true. It was in this same recipe publication. If you ever need 40 pies crusts at once, just drop me a line!

Cyndi

Mounds of Joy Cake

The Mounds candy bar merges with the Almond Joy in our “Mounds of Joy Cake.” This great cake is based on a 1999 1st place state fair winning recipe. Eugenia Adams made a vanilla version of it and won a Championship Cake Award in Michigan. She called it a “Mock Mounds” Cake.

I re-vamped Eugenia’s recipe a bit for our recipe test run. For the choco-holic in me (and others), I added chocolate to the frosting and filling. This is a deceivingly simple cake to make. At the same time, it’s a show-stopper that’s epic tasting.

Almond Joys Got Nuts, Mounds Don’t

To keep with a Mounds/Almond Joy theme, I used almonds as the featured nut instead of just any nut And since I go crazy for coconut, I also upped the amount of shredded coconut and substituted coconut oil for shortening. I even increased the coconut extract in the cake itself and the filling for extra flavor boosts.

You start with: three coconut almond cakes.

Between them and on top you layer a coconut filling.

And a chocolate layer. It easy to spread around with the sturdy coconut layer underneath.

Eugenia used regular sugar in the frosting, so we did too. Next time I’m going to try it with powdered sugar for a different texture.

Before the final frosting, you add almonds to the top.

Then finish it with the chocolate frosting/filling and more coconut.

Seriously. This award winning cake is so easy to make! The hardest part of it all is waiting for the cakes to cool so you can deck it out and eat it. Enjoy!

Cyndi

p.s. Coo Coo for Coconut? Search our site for “coconut.” You’ll find a tropical pie and a coconut cocktail you’re sure to love. Plus we’ll keep adding more recipes featuring coconut in the future, so stay tuned.

Raspberry Berets

Aptly named Raspberry Berets, these colorful and creative cookie cups are like mini fruit pies. They get me singing the Prince song of the same name every time. We highly recommend baking them, with Prince tunes as your soundtrack.

They are crowd-pleasing and so easy to make! I mean, really easy. You start with a delicious cookie shell made with butter, granulated and powdered sugar, baking soda, salt, and flour. Fresh out of the oven (while still in the tins) you re-press the cups (to be deep enough to hold the fillings) and let them cool.

Beth Krauss won at the 2015 Ohio State Fair with this Raspberry Berets recipe (third place) and said they were inspired by her love of bite-sized desserts. If you love shortbread, you’re going to love these cookie cups. If you love buttercream, you’re going to scream for these.

The “filling” is a seedless raspberry jam with a rich raspberry buttercream on top. You finish them a fresh raspberry.

Baking Tips:

If you are making these raspberry berets ahead of time and freezing, a raspberry gummy works well as a substitute garnish.

Another idea is the bake the cookie shells/cups and freeze them in sealed plastic freezer bags (or refrigerate them instead). You can pre make the buttercream too and keep it in the freezer or fridge. That way, with some raspberry jam and fresh raspberries on hand, you can assemble all or part of the batch on the day that you need them.

Beth, the wining creator of this recipe, says that if raspberries aren’t your thing, go with a lemon curd, coconut custard, or even chocolate pudding as the filling.

Try this award-winning recipe today! You won’t regret it. This is one of our most popular recipes. One taste and you’ll know why. Put these in heavy rotation and in the “best cookie” category.

-Cyndi

Savory Butternut Squash Carrot Pie

This Butternut Squash Carrot Pie is a savory dish you can savor all winter long. It is comfort food at its finest. It’s also vegetarian. The squash and carrot filling is flavored by cumin, butter, salt, and pepper. Its topped with caramelized onions and fresh sage.

At the 2013 Minnesota State Fair, this recipe stood out to us…from Susan Gran, winner for “best savory pie” (Pillsbury contest). Try it out. We did. And wow!

Here’s what it looks like before you put it in the oven.

You can even do individual portions in cupcake tins. Just bake it for less time of course.

And here I walk you through some of the main steps. I made the filling a day ahead and doubled the batch. I had a good feeling about this one.

First I chopped up the squash and carrots and got them roasting.

I used butternut squash but acorn or even pumpkin would work well too, depending on your tastes.

You toss the squash and carrots with olive oil, salt, pepper and one of my favorite spices, cumin. (I also added cayenne, because heat is a close friend of mine.) You can make the caramelized onions ahead of time too.

Delish Dinner Party Main Dish

Once the squash and carrots were roasted, I pureed the filling with the other key ingredients. If you don’t have a food processor, try a stick blender instead. At this point I put it in my fridge for my dinner party the next day.

When party time came I rolled out my pre-made pie crust and made a full-size pie. Depending on the size of your squash and carrots, you may have extra filling. You can also do cut-outs for mini pies. We did and it worked like a charm.

This butternut squash carrot pie is a colorful recipe, with the vibrant squash contrasting with the fresh sage on top.

There were no leftovers, but the minis would have made terrific to-go lunches. Guess I will have to make them again! And soon. You should give them a try too.

Watch for more savory dishes in the coming months. You can search our site for your favorite ingredients or filter recipes by category here.

Bake it great!

-Cyndi