This Iowan has entered the State Fair cinnamon roll contest for years. This could be the last time.
DeeDee Kennedy spent most of the night thinking of cinnamon rolls.
At 5 a.m., she gave in to her tossing and turning and started the oven.
Her cinnamon roll recipe lives in her like her sisters’ names, innate and ingrained. So, bathed in the orange sunrise rays, she didn’t have to think what came next: Scald milk. Dissolve yeast. Stir in sugar, salt, egg.
DeeDee let her hands do their work, while she tried to keep her mind from wandering. She’d entered this competition for the better part of 20 years and never placed. Now, her thoughts kept slipping to how this could be her last year, how the rare muscle cancer that has come back three times might not recede this time.
She doesn’t look sick. She doesn’t feel sick. So she often resorts to reminding herself that she is, in fact, very sick.
But, this morning, she’s got to focus, rein in everything that may come next. This morning, she’s baking.
Add flour. Knead until smooth.
The cinnamon roll contest reigned as one of the marquee events in the Iowa State Fair food contest catalog for years. Back then, Tones spice company sponsored the $3,000 prize package. But the company pulled out about a decade ago.
So this year, Jamie Buelt decided to bring back the contest with a $1,000 purse — less than Tones but tied for the highest prize in 2023.
She themed the competition around former Register writer Chuck Offenburger’s longtime quest for the perfect cinnamon roll. In the 1980s, he deemed himself “the czar of cinnamon rolls in Iowa,” and he used his bully pulpit to keep track of favorites and must-trys in the aptly named “Roll Poll.”
The State Fair eventually came calling for his expert taste buds, and he was a cinnamon roll judge right up until the contest ended. One year, more than 70 bakers entered rolls. Another year, there were 55 competitors.
This year there were 42, including DeeDee.
Cover dough and allow to rise until double in size.
Jamie kept the rules of her contest to a minimum: Four frosted cinnamon rolls made from scratch. Must use yeast.
Jamie has entered the fair’s food competitions for years, and two of her three children have, too. As a young mother, she’d come straight from her downtown office, heels and blazer and all, carrying a pie she’d made before the sun came up.
“I'm a really shabby gardener so I can't enter those contests,” she says. “I haven't been on a horse in 20 years, so I can't enter those contests. But I can do this. I bake and cook every single day.”
The competition when Jamie first started, in the early 2000s, was “humbling.”
She didn’t place a lot — one especially memorable time simply because the sides of her pie pan were sticky. But when she did, she grew to 10 feet tall.
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As good as winning felt, she came back for the camaraderie. These home chefs are the best of the best in Iowa cooking — and rival some professionals in her humble opinion — and after the ribbons are handed out, one of the older entrants might pull a newbie aside with a tip or a trick.
“it's really kind of a lovely fraternity here,” Jamie says. “And, like everything, not that many people cook anymore, so they're not entering cooking contests. So I thought this might be something to help elevate this.“
Earlier in the fair, during another contest she sponsors, My Grandmother’s Pie, a young mother just starting out with her family got a third-place ribbon.
“She’ll continue to enter, and that's a big deal to me,” Jamie says. “This is part of the heritage of the fair, and I just want to keep it going.”
Roll the dough into a rectangle pan. Cover with softened butter and sprinkle sugar, cinnamon and brown sugar.
DeeDee has been perfecting her cinnamon rolls since she was 12 years old.
She’d practice and practice and practice for 4-H competitions at the local county fair. She’d make so many that she’d carry them around the neighborhood, doling rolls out to whoever answered her knock.
Oh, you made my day, the neighbors would say.
When she was a child, her cinnamon rolls would take home blue ribbons. Judges would often remark on how tight the layers were, cascading out from the middle like tree rings. The symmetry on each side was tremendous, they’d say.
But in the adult categories, the closest she got to a win was second. More likely, she nabbed an honorable mention or didn’t place at all.
Since retiring in 2016, she’s entered as many as 60 food competitions some years. And always cinnamon rolls.
Her husband is the cook in the house, she says, but she’s the baker. And she loves to bake.
There’s just so much comfort in letting her hands do the work. Especially when her thoughts are consumed with something else.
Now, this is important: Roll the dough up tightly. Really tightly.
The cinnamon roll judges were an all-star panel of bakers this year. Together, they have more than 1,000 blue ribbons.
And the audience for the State Fair’s famous live judging of cinnamon rolls was nearly 70 fairgoers deep.
The cookie contests and their various classes had more entries, a volunteer tells me, but those were casual contestants. None of them stuck around to see how they placed. Not like cinnamon rolls.
“If you’re a competitor in the audience, I feel your worry and your anxiety and your trepidation,” says Eileen Gannon, a longtime State Fair baker. “I have been there, on your side, when you’re scared witless and you’re trying to get everything in and you’ve been up until 3 a.m.”
Cinnamon rolls is one of the hardest contests to compete in, she says, because getting a consistent bake inside and outside is difficult. So she’s looking for that consistency, moistness and tenderness, and, most importantly, cinnamon flavor.
Gannon and the other judges wield kitchen knives like surgeons with scalpels. Each cut is measured, careful, exact. And with each roll they squish and lick and bite.
No crumb is left behind in the quest for the perfect cinnamon roll.
Cut into 2-inch slices. Refrigerate and allow to rise more. Bake until golden brown.
Most bakers wrote a little history to go along with their recipe.
How they made cinnamon rolls with their grandmothers after church. How their moms gave them cinnamon rolls before the first day of school. How cinnamon rolls became tradition with their husbands when they were celebrating a new job or a new car or a soon-to-be new kid.
How cinnamon rolls are the perfect breakfast when camping on the hill at the Iowa State Fair.
Mix together powdered sugar, vanilla extract and the rest of the frosting ingredients. Whip until creamy and spreadable.
DeeDee makes her rolls at Christmas, for the 35 relatives that gather every year. It’s easy when the recipe lives inside her, when her hands always know what to do.
She made extra rolls this morning, picking the very best ones for the fair. Then her husband went up and down the block and gave the rest away to whoever answered his knock.
She’s done this before, and her neighbors always say: We don't care what they say down at the fair. You’re first in our book.
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“I want to cut into this one,” Lana Shope, pie baker of legend around the fairgrounds, says as she announces the winners. Look at how tight those layers are, she says. Like tree rings. And note the symmetry.
“That's 30 years of experience right there,” says fellow judge Jacqueline Riekena.
DeeDee can’t stop thinking about the perfect way that life lines up how it should, when it should. Even if it's frustrating. Even if she doesn’t always understand.
She doesn’t know if she’ll be back to the fair. In a few weeks, she heads north to the Mayo Clinic.
But her cinnamon rolls won a blue ribbon. Finally.
And there's some symmetry in that.
Frost and serve. And if there are any leftovers, take a swing through the neighborhood and make someone’s day.
Courtney Crowder, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. Her State Fair food must-get is the Bauder's Peppermint Bar. Don't be ashamed to have seconds! Reach her at ccrowder@dmreg.com or 515-284-8360. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa State Fair: Why did judges deem this cinnamon roll worth $1,000?
