Fair fare: Cooking up blue-ribbon cuisine

Every year, home cooks test their culinary mettle in Utah State Fair recipe contests. For the winners, it can be pretty lucrative.

Heather Merrill of Tooele took home a $150 gift card from the King Arthur Great Cake Contest and $100 from Make It With Malt-O-Meal for her two first-place wins.

Merrill said she enjoys competing because "it makes me be creative and think of things I wouldn't have made, because I'm using products I wouldn't have used."

For the sponsors such as SPAM, Hidden Valley Ranch or the Utah Cattlewomen, it's like having a whole bunch of minitest kitchens creating new ways to use your product.

Kristina Fox made 10 different batches of brownies at home to perfect her Sassy Orange Brownies, which took the $200 first-place prize in Utah's Big Brownie Bake-off on Sept. 12. Fox works as an adviser at Salt Lake Community College, so she brought the various brownie versions to work for students to taste-test.

"I really like the flavor of chocolate and orange together," Fox said. "I was trying to use unique ingredients and to be creative with the presentation."

Orange and chocolate seemed to be a winning flavor pairing this year. Double Orange Chocolate Cupcakes took the blue ribbon for Kirsten Zimmerman at the Ghirardelli Chocolate Championship.

Carol Bartholomew took home a total of $350 by winning first place in the Governor's Pie Contest, second place in the Beef For Breakfast Contest and third place in Fleischmann's Bake For the Cure Contest.

Bartholomew, a school teacher, has a tradition of giving each of her students $5 of her prize money to spend on a personal service project. The kids write essays about how they spent the money, which has included feeding homeless pets, making cookies for a neighbor, making a quilt for a homeless shelter and raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

"It's become so successful with the students," she said. She's been entering fair contests since 1987.

"Contests are a little intimidating, because you're having someone taste and judge your personal creation," Bartholomew said. "I've walked away empty-handed many times, I've learned not to take it personally. You have to just enter as a learning experience."