I love the county fair. I still have to resist calling it the Del Mar Fair but it’s still the same old fair despite the name change a few years ago. I usually end up eating the same things even though they try and up the ante every year with their totally weird treats. I didn’t get to try any of the new, weird stuff but I really wanted to try the hash brown corn dog, but I couldn’t find it! Alas, here’s a recap of the delicious things I ate this year. I went with Laura on a Tuesday evening and everything below I got for $2 each for the “Taste of the Fair” special.

I don’t know how I have never tried the Australian Battered Potatoes before though this has been a fair staple for years. The $2 enticement finally got me to try this and I think it will be a new item on my rotation of “must-eat” fair foods. It was super crispy – kind of reminded me of a cross between a hash brown and a potato skin, but dipped and battered and extra crispy. I prefer the ranch to the melted cheese as well. For $2  you only get 1, which was fine to me. For $6 you get a ton, which would have been too many.

I tried to go artsy in this photo, but these are the Garlic Battered Mushrooms that I absolutely adore. The place that sells these at the fair has a restaurant in Encintas, CA, and yet I have never been there. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This $2 taste was less than last year. They really cut back on portion sizes for the $2 tastes this year. But guess what? These are still awesome and delicious.

For my non-fried dish, I opted for a sausage. I love onions, but this was a little ridiculous. I had to take some of the onions off so I could enjoy it, and even then I could barely see or taste the sausage. Last I checked, I ordered sausage, not just caramelized onions. Oh well. Should have found a polish dog or something else to munch on.

I love getting the $2 baked potato. This is supposed to be 1/3 of a regular sized potato (!) if you can believe that. Pretty standard – comes with butter and chives, though they must have been feeling nice because they also gave me sour cream. Totally tasty and totally worth the $2.

This is the booth that was serving the “Deep Fried Butter”. Laura and I hung around the booth trying to catch a glimpse of someone ordering it so we could see what it looked like, but no such luck. I wasn’t going to order it myself, either. It sounded gross, though Jake told me (he’s been working security at the Fair this year) that one of the guards got it and it was sort of like a churro. Weird.

Our last stop of the night was at the Gingerbread House. Laura got the warm ginger cake (which was warm and had a good amount of spices with real whipped cream) and I got a bunch of cookies to eat later.

From l-r, clockwise: Cotton Candy, Peanut Butter, Churro and Gingerbread

The gingerbread cookie was my favorite of the bunch – soft and a little spicy. The cotton candy cookie just tasted like a sugar cookie to me; I think that’s what it was, just colored pink. The Churro cookie was kind of like a snickerdoodle but it tasted like there was maybe one other element to it. The peanut butter was just tasty. The cookies were a little over $1 each and if you buy 3 or more then you get a gingerbread man for free.

The San Diego County Fair
Now through July 5th
Closed Mondays

Roxy Restaurant is usually one of the first places I hit at the fair. I can’t pass up the Garlic Battered Mushrooms with Ranch sauce… if you’re a mushroom lover like me, this are divine. I didn’t even realize until this year that Roxy Restaurant is in San Diego County – in Encinitas even! HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS? Sorry for the shouting, but my surprise was truly great in knowing that I could have been having garlic battered mushrooms all year long! Trust me when I say you’ll see a review of the restaurant on this blog some time this year!

Oh, looking at this photo makes me long for another mushroom. I did notice that compared to my photo from last year, they put one less mushroom on the stick. Arrrgh. I will console myself with the knowledge that I don’t have to wait until next June to get these again.

Next up! Potatoes. There are so many ways to have a potato at the fair – fried, Australian battered, chips, covered in stuff, or baked with other kinds of stuff! I must also mention that the day we went to the fair was a Tuesday. Tuesdays you can get a $2 taste of items at every food booth in the fair. I got the $2 baked potato from the California Pita Co., which was 1/3 of a baked potato with butter and chives.

Uh, I’m pretty sure I could not have eaten a full sized potato if this was 1/3. It was so good, I ate every buttery bit, including the skin. This filled me up though and I started wondering how much more I could eat. Not everyone has a bottomless stomach like our dear friend, Alyssa.

Chicken Charlie’s is where you can get some of the crazy food. Like the Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich (which Alyssa has had), Deep Fried Avocados, Deep Fried Frog Legs, Deep Fried Smores, the Oatmeal Cookie Chicken Sandwich (the Kookie Cookie) and the Zucchini Weeni. Let’s guess what I got from here!

If you guessed Zucchini Weeni then you win an imaginary prize! Congrats! This is a hot dog stuffed inside of a zucchini, which is then battered and deep fried. It was pretty good, the only lame part was that it fell apart before I finished it. Also, there was no mustard or anything besides ketchup available. I don’t like ketchup! Damn it. Oh well. Still tasty.

At this point I was starting to wind down. Not too much room left in the stomach and I felt I was getting close to being borderline sick so I didn’t want to eat too many more fried things. Onto dessert it was at this point!

Mmm, cinnamon rolls.

I adore cinnamon. I would marry it if I could. This cinnamon roll was packed with lots and lots of cinnamon. I only wish there was more frosting. The cinnamon roll seemed to absorb the frosting and by the time we finished it, there was no frosting left, just little cinnamon bites.

My last item of the day? I can’t ever go without this, even though the last few years it wasn’t quite up to par. But my last item of the day was a Date Shake.

I’m very happy to report that this year’s Date Shake is much, much improved. With date bits in every sip, I was chewing through my shake and enjoying the milkshakey goodness. The past few years the Date Shake was seriously lacking in dates, but they have more than made up for it this year. So happy!

Are you planning on visiting the San Diego County Fair this year? Don’t forget that you can get tickets at Albertson’s for $11. Or, you can do like I did and enter a One Day Contest for free admission to the fair. Go and pig out and enjoy summer at the fair.

I have never entered a food contest before. I thought briefly about entering something for the San Diego Cake Club’s show but I don’t think my skills are quite up to par for that (looking at past entries is intimidating!). While looking at the website for the County Fair this year, I started looking at the Home & Hobby Contests. If you enter one of the One Day Contests, you get free admission to the fair, and you could win a prize! They had a “Cupcakes & Muffins” contest that sounded like something I wanted to enter with.

My entry? Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream. I found this recipe at Patent & the Pantry and reworked it a little to my liking. I did a test run the week before to try my hand at piping techniques:

["Stars"]

["Swirls"]

[Innards of the cupcake - see the specks of tea?]

I ended up going with the “Stars” piping technique and using a combination of two colors, orange and yellow, for the top. The end result:

I thought they turned out rather pretty, myself. I convinced my friend, Julia, to also enter. She made “Sean’s Cherry Chocolate Surprise” cupcakes – chocolate cupcakes with bits of maraschino cherries and chocolate inside. They looked totally cute, but sorry, I don’t have a photo of them!

We just made it in time to get through the gate at 12:30P to enter our cupcakes. We were also the last ones to get there, but luckily we got there in time to submit our entries.

[Chocolate Cupcakes]

There were 4 classes to compete in: Dessert Cupcakes, Chocolate Cupcakes, Savory Muffins and Sweet Muffins. Sweet Muffins seemed to be the largest class and the Savory Muffins were the smallest. All in all, there were 65 entries. They awarded ribbons through 5th place for each category.

[Dessert Cupcakes - mine are the ones in the pink box]

Neither of us won a ribbon. The winner of my category (dessert cupcakes) was also the winner overall of the “Best in Show” – it’s the one above with the pineapple and coconuts on a tray with little umbrellas in each cupcake. I honestly didn’t even think too much about presentation – and it wasn’t much of a surprise that the most elaborate looking cupcakes won overall. But it was a learning experience to see all of the entries and it was totally fun to enter!

Here’s my recipe for my cupcakes:

Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes (makes 12 cupcakes)

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 teabags Earl Grey tea (I used Stash brand tea) – about 1 tablespoon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat the butter until soft. Add sugar to butter until it is light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, making sure it’s thoroughly combined before adding the next egg. Sift together the dry ingredients in another bowl, including the tea. Combine buttermilk and vanilla in a measuring cup. Beat in half of the dry mixture with the wet, then add the buttermilk/vanilla and the rest of the dry mixture, stirring it all until just combined. Line the cupcake pan with 12 cups and fill them about two-thirds full. Bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cool thoroughly before frosting.

Lemon Buttercream

• 1/4 cup salted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 3 1/2 – 4 cups powdered sugar
• zest of one lemon
• 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice

Place butters and shortening together in a large mixing bowl and beat until combined. Add one cup of sugar at a time, mixing well after each cup. I like it when it’s at 3 1/2 cups of sugar – but if you want it a bit sweeter, add 4 cups (or one 1lb. box of powdered sugar). Add lemon zest and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Mix. Add until it’s the right consistency for you – I like it at about 2 1/2 tablespoons. This makes more than enough to frost 12 cupcakes – you will have leftovers. It’s probably enough to frost 24 if you double the recipe above. Store at room temperature.