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 - Cookies & Milk!

It's State Fair time here in Minnesota! The fair started last Thursday and goes through Labor Day. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I love the fair. So, this week I'll be featuring some cupcake decorating ideas inspired by some of my favorite things at the state fair.

One of the booths that are super duper busy at the fair is Sweet Martha's Cookies. You can buy a huge pail of cookies (huge! and overfilled to the point where you have to eat a bunch of cookies in order to get the lid on) and then head over to the all-you-can-drink milk booth (chocolate or skim, $1) and have a milk and cookies fest! Here is Sweet Martha's website: http://sweetmarthas.com/

Anyway, here is my tribute below. It is a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting but I think a chocolate chip cupcake or even a tres leches cupcake would be great! The "cookies" on top are cookie crisp cereal and I added the straw to represent the "milk".

State Fair (Part 2)

I never miss a spin through the Agriculture/Horticulture building at the fair. Check out this awesome display of vintage seed sacks. They are hard to find these days because most were re-purposed to be of use on the farm (towels, rags, bags, even clothes)


However, the main draw for me is the crop art:

And finally - check out these awesome scarecrows!