dsmWeekly - August 7, 2024

This Friday, catch local baking champ Eileen Gannon on Netflix's new "Blue Ribbon Baking Championship." (Photo: Netflix)

FOOD & DINING

Five baking tips from Eileen Gannon, a blue ribbon legend and new Netflix star
Writer: Karla Walsh

When Eileen Gannon took home her first Iowa State Fair blue ribbon for cornmeal muffins, at the age of 12, she never could have imagined where her desserts would take her. Today, she’s racked up more than 600 culinary awards and founded her own award-winning chocolate sauces, under the label Sunday Night Foods. You can find all of them — including sea salt chocolate, dark chocolate orange and (my favorite) dark chocolate peppermint — at Hy-Vee, Fareway, Gateway Market and online.

Starting Friday, you can find Gannon herself right in your living room. She’s one of 10 contestants on Netflix’s new “Blue Ribbon Baking Championship” who are mixing, baking and decorating their way to become “America’s best baker.”

Gannon recently told dsm that each episode involves two challenges: an hourlong skills showcase called the “fast fair” and an elimination challenge, both of which are judged by “Semi-Homemade Cooking” star Sandra Lee, former White House pastry chef Bill Yosses and baker/author/TV host Bryan Ford. The “cheftestants” share their desserts in a fair-style tent, where the judges know exactly who made what.

“The most memorable part was fear,” Gannon said. “You’re only as good as your last bake.”

While she can’t share many details about the show itself, Gannon did give us the dish about one of the desserts she made. The test: Take a dessert that previously won you a blue ribbon and then give it a twist. Gannon cleverly transformed her blue ribbon banana cream pie into a towering cake, with layers of banana cake, some crumbled graham crackers, banana pastry cream, fresh bananas and stabilized whip cream, all decorated with Swiss meringue. (Swoon!)

We’ll have to wait until Friday to watch the first results, but in the meantime, you can admire Gannon’s skills in person at the Iowa State Fair. She plans to teach four workshops that require no reservations or tickets (other than the fair’s general admission fee):

11:30 a.m. Aug. 8: How to Make a Championship Cake (Elwell Family Food Center)
3 p.m. Aug. 10: Championship Cakes and Cookies (Maytag Family Theaters)
11 a.m. Aug. 11: Blue Ribbon Pies and Tarts (Maytag Family Theaters)
7 p.m. Aug. 15: Creative Cocktails and Appetizers (Maytag Family Theaters)

The Sunday Night Foods team will share free samples, hand out coupons and sell all five flavors of the Founder’s Reserve line while supplies last at the Blue Ribbon Foundation booths throughout the fair.

Can’t make it to one of her workshops? We have some sweet news for you: She was kind enough to share five tricks to level-up even the most humble bakes.

Go nuts. A mere 1 teaspoon of almond extract is all that stands between you and turning a box of white cake mix into something that tastes like a classic wedding cake.
Bring on the buzz. No one will guess it’s a boxed brownie mix if you stir 1 teaspoon of instant coffee powder into the batter.
Keep cool. Always chill your cookie dough after mixing. Since it’s hard to muscle your way through rock-hard chilled cookie dough to portion it out, use a cookie scoop to make dough balls immediately after mixing. Then cover the dough balls, chill them overnight and bake them — or freeze them to bake later.
Break the rules and underbake the cake. Set a timer to check doneness at 10% shy of the lowest time the recipe suggests. (If it recommends 20 to 24 minutes, for example, start checking in at 18.) Insert a toothpick 2 inches from the edge of the pan, then slide it out. You want just a few crumbs sticking. The middle should still be a little underdone, because the cake will finish baking as it cools. “I’m a firm believer that all the flavor gets baked out in the last five minutes of baking,” Gannon said. “If there’s no moisture, the cake can’t convey the flavor.”
Bake it easy. For a dessert that looks gourmet but almost couldn’t be easier to build, Gannon recommends her three-ingredient Chocolate Tart. To make it, fill a store-bought pastry crust with a filling made from a jar of Sunday Night Foods dessert sauce and one egg. Place it in an oven preheated to 400 F, turn off the heat and let the tart hang out in the oven for 10 minutes. And voilà: a chocolate triumph.

Set your sights on the Iowa State Fair, which opens on Thursday. (Photo: Iowa State Fair)

BEST BET

Fair Fever

The Iowa State Fair festivities kick off with the state’s largest parade, followed by 10 days of contests, animals, amusement rides and, of course, the food. This year’s fair features a lot of Wonka-worthy new treats, from color-changing lemonade to lobster corndogs and cinnamon crunch apple tacos.

This year’s grandstand lineup features rockers like Foreigner with Melissa Etheridge (Aug. 9) and Motley Crue (Aug. 14), country balladeers Brett Young (Aug. 12) and Thomas Rhett (Aug. 13) and the R&B star Ne-Yo (Aug. 17). We’re most eager to hear The Avett Brothers (Aug. 16), who blend bluegrass, folk, honky tonk, country and vintage rock ‘n’ roll.

The Week Ahead

Gallery talk with artist Lionel Cruet (5:30 p.m. Thursday): Des Moines Art Center curator Elizabeth Gollnick and featured artist Lionel Cruet discuss the aftermath of natural disasters featured in his paintings and photographs on display in “Hurricane Season” through Sept. 22.

Architecture on the Move (5:30 p.m. Friday): Take an architect-guided sidewalk tour of Des Moines’ quintessential buildings. Choose from one of four paths featuring landmarks such as the Hotel Fort Des Moines, Saddlery Building and Catholic Pastoral Center.

Squonk (6:30 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m., 12:30 and 6:30 p.m. Saturday; 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Sunday): Try your hand (and feet) at playing the “squonkcordion,” a giant outdoor musical instrument, with a group of world-traveling musicians at one of six immersive musical performances.

Prisoners of War in Iowa (11 a.m. Saturday): Historian and author Linda McCann leads a discussion on the 25,000 German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war who lived and worked in Iowa during World War II.

Ben Folds (7:30 p.m. Sunday): The prolific singer-songwriter brings his “Paper Airplane Request Tour” to Hoyt Sherman Place, with special guest Lindsey Kraft. The tour moves to Davenport for another concert at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Olympic medalist Regan Smith learned to swim at a Foss Swim School in 2007. (Photo: Foss Swim School)

ARTS & CULTURE

Swimming for Olympic medals — and basic safety

Writer: Michael Morain

Even the Olympic swimmers started with the basics. They learned to float and doggy-paddle years ago, long before they were rocketing through the pool this month in Paris.

Regan Smith, the Twin Cities swimmer who last week won five medals (two gold, three silver), learned how to swim as a 5-year-old at her neighborhood Foss Swim School. She’s one of more than 20 million students who have learned to swim over the past 30 years in the school’s pools across the Midwest.

“Every day, we see at least 100 kids,” said Ellie Meyers, an assistant manager at the Foss Swim School in Ankeny.

The Ankeny location opened in 2020 with the Foss’ typical U-shaped indoor pool, where younger swimmers can splash around the shallow arm of the U while older swimmers paddle longer distances in the other.

Enrollment has opened up for the fall quarter, Sept. 3 through Dec. 22, for students from 6 months on up.

Some of the students are adults who’ve always wanted to learn to swim or were prompted by a scary incident at a pool or lake. Drowning continues to be the single leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4, and the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related death for children up to 14.

To help, Foss offers on-site instruction as well as free outreach programs — dry-land presentations about water safety — for preschools, day care sites and neighborhood groups. Those safety programs encourage people to use close supervision, wear life jackets when appropriate, install barriers and alarms around pools, and know how to respond to emergencies.

“We’re definitely moving in the right direction,” Meyers said.

Her goal is to teach basic swimming skills, but she still admires the swimmers who excel. She’s been watching the Olympics.

“It’s incredible,” she said. “Their breathing techniques — in the 50-meter, some of the men don’t breathe the whole time, which is wild.”