The San Diego County Fair, the largest one in the United States with an estimated 1.6M visitors annually, is known for its quirky, over-the-top vendor food. This organizers of this year's fair themed it "How sweet it is" and asked its vendors to come up with at least one rainbow-colored "unicorn-specific" dish.

One vendor took the unicorn-food challenge and created these cotton candy ice cream sandwiches:

Yes, those are Fruity Pebbles.

San Diego Union-Tribune podcasters Abby Hamblin and Luis Gomez humorously rated the taste of five of the fair's more unusual food offerings:

Deep-fried filet mignon:

[Abby] This dish wins the award for ugliest presentation with the best taste...

Not an actual donut (sad face)

Spaghetti donut:

[Luis] This dish was exactly what I had imagined, which is just a bunch of pasta shaped as a doughnut. It’s not fried. And it tasted just as I imagined, just pasta. It wasn’t disappointing, but it wasn’t totally exciting either...

Lasagna nachos:

[Abby] This was my favorite of the day. It tastes like pasta but feels like a nacho...

More: San Diego County Fair food diary: 5 unique dishes to try and What to eat at the San Diego County Fair this summer

The fair is open now through July 4 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

screenshots via The San Diego Union-Tribune Read the rest

Pastry chef and Bon Appétit's senior food editor Claire Saffitz has been reverse engineering popular candies like Kit Kats and Skittles in an effort to make her own gourmet versions. For both candies, it's quite the process to recreate artisanal versions of them!

If this is your kind of thing, Saffitz has also tried to recreate junk food like Cheetos and Twinkies.

(digg) Read the rest