We’ve got $2,000 for the best cinnamon roll!
The “Great Cinnamon Roll Challenge of 2024” is set for next Saturday, Aug. 10, at 1:30 p.m. at the Iowa State Fair. As “the sommelier of cinnamon rolls,” I’m chief judge – sort of.
DES MOINES, Iowa – “My” contest to find the best cinnamon roll in Iowa – actually the best one made by somebody at home and not one of those available in a café, bakery or other commercial establishment – will be back bigger and better than ever next Saturday, Aug. 10, at the Iowa State Fair.
The “Great Cinnamon Roll Challenge of 2024” will be held at 1:30 p.m. that afternoon in Elwell Family Food Theater on the fairgrounds.
And this time, I plan to be there!
(Some may recall that two days before last year’s cinnamon roll event, I was exposed to COVID, and had to isolate at home. Thanks to Connie Fulk Boesen – who grew up a State Fair brat, then was Des Moines City Council member and is now Mayor of Des Moines – for subbing for me last summer. I probably still owe her a latte for doing so.)
Here was the 2023 grand champion! (Photo by Jamie Buelt)
Biggest news for this 2024 event: The single best roll, as determined by a half-dozen expert judges who’ll recommend the winner to me as final arbiter, will win up to $2,000 – twice what last year’s winner DeeDee Kennedy, of Des Moines, received!
Total prize money for all placers will be $4,500, with another $500 being spent on gifts for all who enter rolls.
Donors for the prizes are the contest’s chief sponsor Jamie Buelt, of Ankeny, at $2,500; I’m kicking in $1,000; business consultant and cinnamon roll aficionado Doug Moore, of Ames, has added $500, and another donor, who wants to remain anonymous, also gave $500.
Buelt, 62, runs the public relations company “en Q strategies” and has worked on all kinds of business and public projects across the state. And she’s been an Iowa State Fair junkie since she won a baton twirling championship at the fair when she was a sophomore in high school.
What keeps her love of the fair kindled, she said, is that “I like baking, and I like learning. And you can learn an awful lot at the fair, whether you win or lose. There’s an interesting camaraderie among the people who enter the fair’s different contests. You find yourself cheering for people, even if you’re in competition with them, because it obviously means so much to so many of them.”
Jamie Buelt and champ cinnamon roller DeeDee Kennedy right after the 2023 contest. (Photo by Gary Buelt)
She has long said her “real dream job” would be serving as food superintendent at the Iowa State Fair. But Pat Berry now holds that position, after the late Arlette Hollister was the fair’s food boss for decades.
So, since about 2010, Buelt has treated herself by entering her own favorite foods in the contests at the fair, and a dozen or more years ago, she won “Best Meatloaf.” She also has spent oodles of time organizing and sponsoring other food contests there. Her contests have featured chili, rhubarb dishes, pie and, yes, meatloaf. Maybe others, too.
What got her Big Time into cinnamon rolls at last year’s fair is that she and I have been friends for more than 40 years. She remembered that from July of 1982 through the Iowa State Fair in August of 1986, I was the self-appointed czar of cinnamon rolls in this state. That was well-back in my years of writing the “Iowa Boy” column for the Des Moines Register.
In early summer of ’82, an Iowa State University journalism student, Jim Larson, who was commuting from Ames to Des Moines for a summer internship with us at the Register, mentioned he was stopping most mornings for a cinnamon roll at Murf’s Café in little Alleman, midway between the cities. He raved about them. I oohed and aahed. Next day, he brought me one. It was great!
“You know, every restaurant in Iowa has these things,” Larson told me. “You ought to rate them, just like the sports guys rate basketball teams.”
And thus, I started the “Roll Poll,” which turned into one of the most popular features I ever offered at the Register. Over the next four years, I must’ve compiled and released a dozen to 15 new Roll Polls – always with a new No. 1 roll. The rolls had to be homemade, publicly available in a place where you could also get a cup of coffee, with a place to sit down and enjoy the delicacy. With every new poll, I’d get dozens of new letters from readers, telling me about even better rolls in other cafes.
My wife Mary Riche makes a darned good cinnamon roll.
A couple of special memories:
-- The rolls made by Maxine Arney at Maxine’s Catering in Holstein in northwest Iowa. Maxine had a catering business that operated mostly in the evenings. When she’d have left-over mashed potatoes, she’d stir some of them into her roll dough the next morning, and that proved to be a perfect ingredient. Some of Iowa’s best cinnamon roll bakers today are still stirring in some mashed potatoes.
--Once I really had things rolling, so to speak, the State Fair picked me up to be judge of its own cinnamon roll contest. On Aug. 16, 1983, at the fair, I judged solo and ate substantial pieces of more than 75 cinnamon rolls during the contest, and then I had to walk clear across the fairgrounds to get to my car in the parking lot. The temperature was 108 – still the hottest day on record at the Iowa State Fair – and I mean to tell you, the dough was rising!
So when Buelt decided last year that she wanted to resurrect a big cinnamon roll contest at the fair, she listed it this way in the fair’s contest listings – that it was “sponsored by Jamie Buelt in support of Chuck Offenburger and his travels across Iowa looking for the perfect cinnamon roll.”
And now she has started calling me “the sommelier of cinnamon rolls.” Once I looked up what “sommelier” meant, I’ve really enjoyed the new title.
Here are some additional details about the “Great Cinnamon Roll Challenge of 2024”:
--The expert judges are Dianna Sheehy, Eileen Gannon, Lana Shope, Doug Moore, Amy Moore and Dr. Daniel McGuire. Most are expert bakers, experienced judges at the fair and/or dedicated cinnamon roll eaters.
--There will be two separate “classes” of cinnamon rolls. One is for the “traditional frosted cinnamon roll,” and the other is for “specialty cinnamon rolls.” The latter can be “whatever you want to make it” as long as it includes cinnamon and is basically a roll.
--In each of the two classes, there will be four cash prizes -- $500 for first, then $300, $200 and $100.
--Following that judging, the place-winning rolls will be put together in an “overall” contest, which you can think of like “best of show.” The judges will have another look and taste, confer, and award three additional cash prizes -- $1,500 for first, $500 for second, and $300 for third.
--I’ll be emceeing, leading the storytelling, and interviewing contestants, judges and spectators. I’ll be consulting on taste tests, and then in the “overall” judging, I’ll cast the tie-breaking vote if one is necessary.
Oh, it’s going to be fun! So come join us in the Elwell Family Food Center at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
This roll isn’t eligible to be judged at the Iowa State Fair in our “Great Cinnamon Roll Challenge of 2024,” because it’s from a commercial establishment — the legendary Hamburg Inn No. 2 in Iowa City. But it’s one of the best cinnamon rolls I’ve found in the past year. If I were doing a new “Roll Poll,” this one would be highly-rated. So would the roll that the Drake Diner offers in Des Moines. Where are your favorites?
Buelt is also sponsoring or co-sponsoring two other contests at the Elwell Family Food Center during this summer’s State Fair.
On Friday, Aug. 16, at 1 p.m., she and Marcia Peeler, of Indianola, her longtime associate in the public relations business, are putting on an “Incredible Rhubarb” contest in honor of Peeler’s late mother, Mary Nieman, who died in June at the age of 96. “Mary taught both Marcia and me a whole lot about baking,” said Buelt. This contest “is for all kinds of things you can make, as long as it has rhubarb in it.”
And on Saturday, Aug. 17, at 2 p.m., Buelt presents “Tribute to Bessie Scrumptious Berry Pie Contest,” honoring her late grandmother Bessie Beggs Heiliger. She ran the bus depot and café in Bloomfield in southeast Iowa and was also president of the Chamber of Commerce there before her death in 2001. “My grandmother was especially famous for her pies, so this contest is for the best multi-berry pie,” Buelt said.
See you at the fair – I hope!
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I love this Chuck! I will be a food judge this year and am really excited about that. I will be judging something else while you are knee deep (or is that stomach deep?) in cinnamon rolls. I hope to have a moment to stop by and see how it's "rolling" over your way. Enjoy!
Chuck, I always learn something in an Offenburger column, something I can honestly say I would never, ever have even fathomed. This week’s learning is that there is actually a baker who includes in her cinnamon roll ingredients left-over mashed potatoes! Who knew?