Indiana State Fair 2019 Photos, Part 4 of 6: Cake Bosses

NASA’s 50th: where “spacewalk” meets “cakewalk”.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

4-H has always had two buildings in the northwest corner of the Indiana State Fairgrounds. (A third one next door remains an unsolved mystery to this day.) For decades, one was their official Exhibit Hall and the other was a dormitory of sorts. The latter was remodeled years ago, but I continued ignoring it because I presumed it still had nothing to do with me. This year someone thoughtfully posted signs in the Exhibit Hall alerting attendees that the other building — now called Centennial Hall, if it wasn’t before — likewise featured exhibit space for general audiences.

This year therefore marked our first time stepping foot in said building. Among other sections new to us was a bevy of beautiful cakes, the results of hours of effort, imagination and concentration on the part of whoever was blessed with these amazing colossal talents. A shame we couldn’t eat any of their works, merely behold them.

Surely the handiwork of the Bountiful Baker of Oz.

Wonderland would be the most illogically logical place to find an upside-down cake.

Winnie-the-Pooh cake, but they had to settle for a fake beehive instead of a real one.

Friends: the cake!

Friends: the cake: the other side!

A cake celebrating travel really speaks to me.

Cake shaped like garden topsoil, guaranteed to taste better than mud pies.

Bouquet-shaped cake. Couldn’t tell if it contained actual floral notes.

My brother-in-law would pay top dollar for this Motley Crue cake.

Volcano and dinosaur diorama, but edibles instead of science fair project. I’m reminded of Fantasia and like to think this is “Rite of Spring Cake”.