The anticipation is so thick, you can cut it with a knife. Judges, pacing back and forth, examine each dish while its architect stands by helpless to do anything to help. And it’s no easy process, as calories and sugar stretch out as far as the eye can see.

This is the life of Iowa State Fair cooking contest participants.

“You can tell almost immediately if they are pleased with your dish,” said Susan Knapp, vice president of marketing and sales with Knapp Properties Inc. and a longtime contest participant. “Everyone who enters is standing around watching the judges and trying to read their body language. It is very intense. Anyone who hasn’t seen it for themselves should really try to. It’s pretty entertaining.”

The cooking contests at the fair are not something you casually get into. For most of the people involved, it is a tradition, something there families have done for generations.

“I first started doing these contests when I was 12 years old,” said Eileen Gannon, vice president of wealth management for Smith Barney and cooking contest veteran. “I do it every year, and part of the reason is I’ve been doing it most of my life. I came to my first state fair when I was 6 months old.”

Gannon is from a family of 14, so she had to learn the culinary arts early on.

“You didn’t learn to cook in our family because you wanted to,” she said. “You did it because you had to.”

And her skills have brought her recognition. Gannon has won 136 ribbons, including best overall cake five different times and a blue ribbon in the Pillsbury Pie Contest last year.

This year, Gannon will follow her traditional plan.

“A lot of people start thinking about what they are going to do months in advance,” she said. “They do a lot of planning and a lot of work early on. Most of the time, I create as I go. I think it’s more fun that way.”

Gannon does most of her work in the few days before the dishes must be taken to the fair for judging. That is no easy task when you consider she is entering seven cakes this year.

“I’m very much one of those ‘do it the night before the test’ people,” she said. “The weekend before judging, I’ll work every hour I’m not sleeping. The food is fresher that way.”

Knapp said she first participated with her mother when she was very young, but quit participating for a while until her children were born.

“For me, it’s a family thing,” she said. “Now, I do it with my grandkids.”

Knapp is another contestant who waits until the final moments to put the finishing touches on her blue-ribbon dishes.

“We camp out there every year,” she said. “I’ve been known to be cooking in my trailer the night before, trying to get everything together at the last minute, which isn’t always a good thing.”

Knapp said though the competition is big, most people participate because they love to cook and have a good time doing it.

“We’ve been doing it for so long, it’s like old home week when we get to the fair,” she said. “I just do it for fun, and once I’ve won a blue ribbon for something, I retire it.”

Gannon agrees, saying that because the rules bar professional cooks from entering, the contestants do it because they enjoy cooking and enjoy the experience.

“It really isn’t that serious at all,” she said. “I look at cooking as an expression of your creativity with instant gratification for what you’ve done.”

Gannon’s entire family is in on the act as well, including her 84-year-old mother.

“She obviously doesn’t do as much as I do,” she said. “But she’s the one who taught us all. She’ll probably enter one or two things. The state fair is a bit of a habit in our family. We do it because we love it, but also because we always do it.”

So which dishes are they producing that will bring home the blue ribbon this year? Gannon is banking on her cakes, which will include pear ginger spice, mango lime and a six-layer chocolate torte.

Knapp is focusing more on pies, with a peach raspberry pie, a mincemeat pie, and a yet-to-be-determined meringue pie.

“Maybe a pasta dish as well,” she said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

With more than 14,000 entries each year, Gannon said the Iowa State Fair cooking contests are one of the largest food competitions in the nation.

“It is huge,” she said. “It really is worth checking out. It amazes me the creativity and diversity every year.”

Gannon has even turned into a mentor of sorts for up-and-coming cooking contestants. She said many people approach her to figure out exactly how to enter the contests, what the judges usually look for and general tips.

“A lot of people think you just show up the day of the fair and sit your cake on the table for judging,” she said. “But you have to have your applications for what you want to enter in before July 1. Luckily, it is very inexpensive to participate. You can have 10 entries for something like $5.”

For Knapp, with her family being so involved with the fair through several generations, her hope is that she can compile a cookbook featuring all the award-winning recipes her family has created through the years.