The Detroit News. These State Fair judges' job is no cakewalk Crandall Eaton Carolyn Blackman, left, and Fran Robertson judge cake entries at the Michigan State Fair. Although city ways have infected most fair participants these days, wherever they live, these arts endure, with hundreds of examples on display through Labor Day in the fair's Community Arts Building.
Somebody has to pick winners, though, and it's plain hard work.
She's a fine cook herself, she says, taught by her mother, who had the culinary good luck to be of French heritage. So do Blackman of Southfield and McDivitt of Rochester, but as first-time judges, they've never been faced with this much food at one sitting. Usually those are good things, but not always. The idea is to maintain the Fair's high standards.