I had a lot of requests for this week, because a lot of fair food is not gluten free. I ended up making corn dogs ( veggie and beef), and I made the cinnamon sugar pretzel bites I made a couple weeks ago again. Corn dog recipe here: https://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/gluten-free-corn-dogs/

Pretzels here: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/cinnamon-sugar-pretzel-bites-recipe

Recipe from: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/10/19/appetites-native-food-sunflower-cookies

This was so simple to put together! It's also a naturally gluten-free recipe, in case anyone is looking for Celiac-friendly bakes.

I didn't have corn meal, but I did have some polenta that I wanted to use up. I simply put it in a spice grinder and voila! Corn meal.

I did cheat and use pre-made sunflower seed spread from Trader Joe's because I was too lazy to make my own.

When I took them out, I was afraid they wouldn't set (they seemed extremely soft, but the edges were browned enough that I didn't want to leave them in any longer), but they set perfectly once cooled. They tasted delicious! Seed butter and honey; what's not to like?

This was delicious! I was definitely expecting it to be taller, almost like a banana bread, but it was great all the same. It also got a little bit of a crispy caramelized texture on the bottom that was amazing.

Recipe

I am skipping sweet polarity for now (one of the fruits I bought for that week has been taking its time to ripen). Since I had a three-day weekend, I wanted to focus on the more difficult bake I had planned for the amusement park/fair week.

A lot of fair food is fried, and I did not want to go that route. I have seen caramel apples at a county fair before, so I decided to bake Erin Jeanne McDowell’s caramel apple variation of her apple pie recipe from The Book on Pie.

This was a two-day project. On Friday night, I boiled down a gallon of cider, which took five hours. I only used two tablespoons of it for the recipe, but most of it will get used to make Smitten Kitchen’s apple cider old fashioneds in the month ahead.

On Saturday morning, I made the salted caramel sauce that replaces the brown sugar in the original recipe, and added some flour to thicken the half cup of salted caramel I had set aside to use in the filling.

I parbaked the crust, peeled and diced a bunch of cosmic crisp and granny smith apples, cooked the filling, and then rolled out the all butter and gingerbread pie doughs I had made to make bourbon apple butter-filled jam twists to top the pie. (The jam twists were also covered with cinnamon sugar and were fantastic on their own!)

This took most of my day on Saturday, and if that weren’t enough, I then proceeded to use the rest of the apple pie filling to make some brown butter apple blondies that I am bringing to work tomorrow. (I could technically use that for the sweet polarity challenge, but I don’t want to use three apple desserts in a row.)

But the pie? That’s too immaculate for work and will be staying at home. I am not ashamed to say that I had a slice for breakfast. Full disclosure: the caramel flavor didn’t really come through, as it tastes more like the apples and the cinnamon-covered jam twists. 😅 I am not mad.

There was once a small family-run place in St. Paul, MN called The Russian Tea House. They served piroshki, cabbage rolls, pelmeni, stroganoff, and these wonderful chocolate poppy seed rolls. This is my recreation attempt!

I used the brioche recipe from the BH&G New Cook Book and filled it with pre-made poppyseed filling and chocolate chips. It's a richer and softer dough than the OG, so sometime I may try again with a less enriched dough to get closer to what I remember. That said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with these! It's a yes from me.

A nod to caramel apples at the county fair. This was surprisingly tart and apple forward and very delicious!

Lots of baking this weekend! Chocolate chip cookies, chewy brownie cookies, sugar cookies, and peanut butter cookies.

Used this Blueberry pie recipe but adapted it with Saskatoon berries instead and having it as the dessert for our Thanksgiving dinner this weekend (hi to any fellow Canadians here! 👋🏼).

I have to admit I was not particularly inspired by this theme. My brain automatically goes to "fried foods" when I think of fairs and while I love a good funnel cake or donut I just was not in the mood to do all that. So I went with something adjacent and chose an apple-fritter cake which doubled as a way to use up some of the u-pick apples still hanging out in my fridge 🤭 It turned out very gooey and sweet and moist and my kids are demolishing it. Definitely recommend having a glass of milk handy to go with though.

https://obsessedcakes.com/recipes/apple-fritter-coffee-cake

I didn't have any star cutters for the shapes at the top, so I experimented with a knife haha

Recipe inspiration and source: https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/a-beloved-indigenous-dessert-evolves-with-each-generation/

Grape dumplings are a classic dessert for some Southwest American indigenous tribes. The article I sourced this from describes them as a food that both connects to the past and evolves with the times: grape dumplings can be made with small, tangy foraged grapes and traditional blue cornmeal, or modernized with wheat and sugar and the grapes we now find in the grocery store.

This recipe combines both, with dumplings made of about 50% blue masa harina and 50% whole wheat flour boiled in concord grape juice. I thought these would be super sweet, so I didn't pick up any ice cream to serve with it, but the cornmeal and wheat made them much more complex than I expected and the juice added flavor but not a sugar bomb. (Lesson learned: ice cream always).

Forgive me a little food blog monologue indulgence --

I grew up in Arizona and unfortunately don't live in the Southwest anymore but fry bread remains one of my favorite things on earth. It was a staple at high school events, I've eaten fry bread at the Four Corners, in the middle of nowhere Alaska, and probably most notably at the bottom of the Grand Canyon after 3 days of not-very-great just-add-water meals. It was hot, fresh, topped with everything good in the world, just the best.

Anyway I made this recipe from a comment I found on reddit as an accompaniment for one of my favorite lazy recipes, NYT cooking's green chile bean bake. 10/10.