At the Kentucky State Fair, the chocolate chip cookie is king

Two days before the Kentucky State Fair opens to the public, there’s tables piled high with food. Event staff are still putting up signs and a newspaper photographer is fussing over a low row of intricately decorated cakes. Buzzing around all of it, are a dozen people in blue checkered aprons – and they’re eating everything.

“It is every child’s dream and every adult’s nightmare,” Mindy McCulley said.

McCulley normally works in the University of Kentucky’s Family and Consumer Science department. But today? She’s a chocolate chip cookie judge. With 69 plates of cookies in front of her, she takes her job seriously.

“We did not have a huge glass of milk with us, number one,” she said. “Number two: 69 cookies is a lot of cookies.”

Kentucky Public Radio looked through years worth of data. Although people ogle over the cakes, the humble chocolate chip cookie contest is consistently one of the most entered culinary contests. It easily gets more than 100 registrations every year. This year, more than 110 people registered for the contest – even though about 80 actually brought them in.

McCulley is one tough cookie herself. She narrows the field with basic rules - like for instance, each contestant was supposed to send exactly four cookies.

“So they might have too many, their platter might be too big, or it just might not be as outlined in the rules,” she said. “So that makes it really simple to eliminate those people.”

Then she looks for visual appeal. McCulley wants cookies that are uniform in both size and even brown-ness. Some cookies just look tasty – maybe they’re chunky or have little flourishes like finishing salt.

“You can see, there are lots of beautiful cookies here, but they just might not have the blue ribbon taste,” she said.

McCulley and her co-judge Jeanne Badgett treat the tasting like a fine wine. Just a little nibble and then they spit it out. But what’s that blue ribbon je ne se quais?

“For my chocolate chip cookies, I like a little soft in the center and crispy on the outside,” McCulley said. “But when you take a taste of it, it might have way too much baking soda in it, or it might have way too much salt, or, you know, some ingredient that you can really taste.”

After all this, only one cookie can be the best. This year, 39-year-old Aaron Shawler of Taylorsville was awarded the blue ribbon.

“What! No way!” he yelled when he read an email from fair officials telling him he won. “I don’t even know what to think right now! I know it’s just a cookie contest but this is huge for me.”

Shawler said he’s been perfecting his grandmother, Betty Jean’s recipe, for four years now. The biggest modification he made was using a mixture of shortening and butter rather than just butter. He also adds a sprinkle of water to help the sugars dissolve.

Shawler said he joked for years about entering the fair but this was his first time actually remembering to register.

Despite all that preparation, the timer didn’t go off on the prize-winning batch.

“So I look at the cookies, they come out, and I’m like, aw they’re burnt. So I set those aside and start another batch. After the next ones are done I come back and taste the first ones and I’m like: This is it!,” he gasped. “This is the one!”

Watching Shawler work in the kitchen, it’s clear he has this down to a science. He never even glances at the recipe.

He blends together the wet and dry ingredients thoroughly adding just a bit at a time. Then he folds the chocolate chips in – a mixture of semi-sweet and milk chocolate.

“Alright so there we are,” he said, showing off the finished cookie dough. “There is the exact same thing I made to win the fair.”

Normally Shawler would freeze the dough for about a day. But we couldn’t wait. In the oven the dough went. About 15 minutes later, there was a piping hot batch of Kentucky’s best chocolate chip cookies.

Shawler let engagement reporter Giselle Rhoden have the first bite.

“Oh my god,” she said, the cookie making an audible crunch in her mouth. “This is great. If you want a cookie that your grandma made, this is it.”

Even cookie judge McCulley would have been jealous. Rhoden washed down that warm cookie with a cold glass of milk.