This Iowa Baker Won Dozens of State Fair Blue Ribbons—Now She’s Spilling Her Secrets

Just past the corn dog stand, rows of carnival games, and art displays, you’ll find Alisa Woods in her happy place: the Elwell Family Food Center at Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa. After testing, perfecting, and delivering her Mint Chocolate Cookie for the fair’s “Best Snack Cookie” category to the iconic checkered tablecloth-topped table, she listens in as judges award her the coveted blue ribbon. Her only regret is that her blue-ribbon-winning grandma isn’t there to celebrate yet another family win at the iconic table. 

Because blue ribbons run in this baking family. Woods’ State Fair ambitions were sparked in her grandmother’s kitchen more than 30 years ago, she says. When grandma was in preparation mode for State Fair competitions in the 1980s and ‘90s, Woods recalls, a family visit had tasty work built in: “Her test batches were packaged in sandwich bags stacked in the freezer,” she says, “for all of her eight hungry grandkids to snag.” Woods has vibrant memories of her grandmother’s basement stairwell lined with blue ribbons from baking competitions—like a kind of fluttery wallpaper.

“When I moved back to Iowa after living in Chicago and New Orleans after college,” she says, “I decided to enter the State Fair baking competition in 2013 to honor my grandma (who was going through dementia at the time), and flex my competitive muscle.” 

Clearly something had sunk in. In her freshman Fair outing, Woods earned first place for beginners’ desserts and first place overall with her lavender cupcake with lemon curd and vanilla bean buttercream. Over the next seven years, she took home dozens of blue ribbons (including a remarkable 16 in one year alone). Each year, she’d add a new skill or perfect a fresh flavor combination—taking her bar (cookie) and raising it. It was always just a hobby, until this award-winning amateur realized she had all of the ingredients to make it more than that.

And then came a life-changing moment. “When people started asking if they could buy my creations during the pandemic, I set up a porch pick-up and started doing flash sales on Instagram,” she says. “My first one sold 40 dozen and I didn’t sleep a wink that week.” 

This lemonade-out-of-lemons solution is one that would make another of Woods’ matriarchs proud. Her great grandma, the mom of the woman with the blue ribbon wall, once had an in-home bakery where she placed freshly-baked treats on her porch—alongside a jar for neighbors to leave their money.

In 2021, Woods officially launched Sift n Sprinkle Bakery in her certified home kitchen. Turns out, all of the tinkering and the countless nail-biting moments during judging were clutch as Woods began developing her recipes—and frequently selling out her cakes, cupcakes, macarons, cookies, and showy dessert trays.

The judges and Woods’ early customers weren’t the only ones blown away by her bakes. In March 2022, Woods was tapped to make a 75th birthday cake for none other than Sir Elton John. His “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour included a stop at the events center where she used to work full-time, and Woods, of course, accepted the challenge—and pulled out all the stops with a multi-layer cake adorned with piano keys, rainbows, feathers, and Wizard of Oz motifs.

Bake-Off Tips From a Pro

These days, Woods still counts down to the fair each August. Only now, she enters the professional contests, including cake decorating. 

But she loves mentoring up-and-coming amateurs, sharing her best secret: “Make sure to go to the judging,” she tells blue-ribbon-seeking bakers. “You’ll learn so much about what the judges are looking for—and will get direct feedback about how to improve your recipes.”

If you’re unsure of which creation or competition to enter, Woods suggests sticking with what you know. Sure, you could try a riff on the latest viral trend, but the tried-and-true often comes out on top. 

“When I was training for a bike ride across Iowa, my dad told me to ride my bike to the grocery store, to events, and around town; not just on their training rides,” Woods says. “The same holds true for the State Fair. The entries that do the best are the ones I make over and over again for my family: the biscuits I make once a week, my mom’s favorite cake, my dad’s favorite cookie.” 

Through her own experience entering and acting as a judge, the winners are “often the recipes the entrant has memorized.”

Zooming in on specific sweet strategies, Woods says it often boils down to temperature, timing, and technique.

“If you’re making a layer cake, freeze the cakes before you frost them,” she advises. “They’re so much easier to cover in icing!” 

For goodies like scones, pies, and hand pies, it’s also wise to chill out. “Keep your butter cold for the best texture,” Woods says. Particularly for pie dough, you’re looking for cold flecks of butter that are covered in a layer of flour. “You get flakes when that butter releases its steam and pushes the flour away, so you have to have that flour covering it. Otherwise, you just get a pool of butter on your cookie sheet or in your pan.”

And for the best cupcakes, Woods suggests skipping the stand mixer. “It’s so easy to overmix. Try stirring the flour in by hand, and steer clear of those fancy cupcake batter dispensers,” she says. “They work the batter too much. A good old-fashioned cookie scoop works best.”

With all of these tricks in tow, plus a generous scoop of confidence gained from her culinary competitions, Woods’ business is booming five years in. Sift n Sprinkle now offers custom orders, macaron packs that you can find around Central Iowa at other businesses, as well as in-person and online classes to pass on the lessons Woods has learned along the way.

And the family State Fair tradition continues with Woods’ daughter, who asked to enter her first Iowa State Fair baking competition two years ago at age 6. Woods beams as she reveals that her daughter “has won multiple ribbons for her healthy lunchbox creations, cakes, and cookies. She loves a theme, just like her mom.” 

This summer, her son plans to enter his first competition at 5 years old. We can almost picture Woods’ own basement blue ribbon wall filling up now.