State Fair Cupcake: Crop Art!

Today's cupcake is a tribute to crop art. Yes, the fine art of using seeds, beans and grains to express yourself. My cupcake below is decorated with nonpareils, sugar pearls, and candy-coated sunflower seeds. Yes, I'm pretty sure sprinkles don't count as seeds, technically, but have you ever planted and watered one to see if a cupcake bush will grow? I haven't tried it so who can say with 100% certainty?

One my favorites in the crop art display at the fair is the Bad Seed. Below is from last year.....

And below is a pic of this year's piece! Cool, right?

Below is a smattering of my personal favorites from this year's competition.

Below is another, less sucessful, crop art cupcake. I think crop artists must have a boatload of patience - and lots of tweezers! Perhaps a magnifying lens, too.

These last two are very representative of the political tradition in crop art. THere are two amendments on the ballot in November - one limiting marriage  and one limiting voting rights. This isn't a political type blog, so I'll just say both pieces are creative and clever in delivering their message.

State Fair Cupcake: Cotton Candy

Another State Fair post!

Ah, the smell of the fair!  Mostly fried food of every possible kind (deep-fried butter is the craziest, in my opinion) with the occasionaly whiff of manure from the animal barns. The smell that instantly transports me, though, is the sweet smell of cotton candy! So delicious! Although I'm not a big fan of the taste of cotton candy (pure sugar), I admit it fascinates me. That melt-in-your-mouth texture combined with the beautiful pink or blue fluffiness of it..so tempting. So festive!

Anyway, for this cupcake, I topped a funfetti cupcake (I added sprinkles to vanilla batter) with a some cotton candy attached to a striped candy stick. I got the cotton candy from Target (love that it is called Fluffy Stuff). As long as it isn't too humid outside, the cotton candy toppers hold up for several hours.