Tag Archives: cakes

Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 4: The Year in Cakes

August 25, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Giant cake shaped like a small burger, fries, hot dog, chocolate ice cream bar, and caramel apple all stacked on one massive burger.

No, this isn’t a Taste of the Fair dish or a Man v. Food eating challenge. This is a single cake.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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…

…such as cakes! Back in 2019 we discovered for the first time in our entire fair-attending lives that the main 4-H Building wasn’t their only exhibit hall. Next door Centennial Hall was formerly a dormitory — and is still inaccurately and unhelpfully labeled as such — and contained entire competitive categories that we’d never seen before. The cakes in particular were awesome sights to behold.

Then the State Fair went on hiatus in 2020, because 2020. Without that annual reinforcement of the lesson we’d learned, we totally forgot about Centennial Hall until this year. We were only pointed toward it because the contents of the main 4-H Building were restructured, rearranged, and/or relocated elsewhere. For some reason the entire second floor appeared to have been converted into an indoor driving range for 4-H golfers. Thankfully we were redirected to Centennial Hall and discovered the joy of 4-H cakes all over again — 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. Call it the Great Hoosier Bake-Off.

Continue reading →

Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 3: The Year of America’s 250th

August 23, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
White cake with icing picture of bald eagle wearing sunglasses and a US flag bandanna on its head. Next to it is written "'Merica" in red icing.

Meet the radical new Sam the Eagle from Mark Millar’s Ultimate Muppets reboot.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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…

…and one splashy theme recurred throughout the various exhibits of arts, crafts, cookery, and antiquing across all participating buildings: the 250th anniversary of July 4th, 1776, generally considered the date of birth of the United States of America. Granted, not all citizens observed the only semiquincetennial party our nation will ever have, particularly among a statistically significant percentage of the terminally online. No, America isn’t perfect and never will be, which is kind of the point, no matter who’s in charge. If you only love people, places, or things that are perfect, then how many absolutely perfect people, places, or things do you genuinely love? If you count more than one, you’ve gotten it wrong.

As it happens, our road trip this year began over the Independence Day weekend and showed us evidence of folks proud to celebrate offline, about which I’ll get to post about here someday when I get caught up on sharing our travelogues, Lord willing. Anne, for one, was excited to see America cross that milestone without preemption by the Second Coming, collapsing under a giant meteor, or being conquered by a conspiratorial Canada/Mexico tag-team invasion. She braked at every roadside attraction that acknowledged its happening and was overjoyed to see that same enthusiasm here at the fair.

Continue reading →

Indiana State Fair 2019 Encore: 2 Fair 2 Food

August 11, 2019 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
deep-fried chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich!

My rich, creamy Dulcinea.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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…

We trudged back to the working world on Wednesday morning disappointed that we’d missed so many of the “Taste of the Fair” new dishes and annoyed that my primary objective, the deep-fried chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, was nowhere to be found. We chatted a bit and mulled over the possibility of a return engagement. Two unexpected developments sealed the deal:

1. Anne did some online digging, found the official Facebook page for the vendor allegedly carrying the deep-fried chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, and asked them point-blank where the heck they were at the fairgrounds. Where all the State Fair’s materials and resources had failed us, an exemplary moment of customer service on the vendor’s part got us the exact answer.

2. On Friday my employer announced a deal to get discount State Fair tickets, for cheaper than our first set of tickets.

Emboldened and empowered, Saturday we drove once more out to the east side and enjoyed a 4-hour whirlwind do-over. We split a deep-fried chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich between us. We tracked down a few other “Taste of the Fair” offerings that hadn’t made the cut on Tuesday. We photographed a few more exhibits we’d overlooked or skipped the first time around. And we ended up with enough material for three bonus chapters in this very special, unexpectedly extended miniseries.

Continue reading →

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

August 9, 2019 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
NASA 50th!

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

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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.

Continue reading →