East Idaho Eats: Vendor offering ‘sweet temptations’ at the Eastern Idaho State Fair

BLACKFOOT – The Eastern Idaho State Fair is officially underway and one of the most anticipated components of the weeklong event is the food.

There are a plethora of food vendors for fair-goers to sample and EastIdahoNews.com is hoping to try them all. Today, we’re sampling the menu at Sweet Temptations.

Customers have enjoyed the dessert vendor’s homemade cinnamon roll-esque desserts for the last 25 years. This year, Owner Lacey Secrist is introducing a brand-new item called Peach Temptation. It includes sweetbread dough cooked in biscuit form and topped off with a cream cheese frosting, caramel fondue sauce, peaches, a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar and a side of vanilla ice cream. (It took second place in the “Sweetest of them all” category during a food-judging contest Thursday. See the full list of winners here.)

There’s also the award-winning Toffee Tumbler with sweetbread, caramel and nuts and the Pumpkin Whoopie Pie with two cake-like cookies, thick cream cheese frosting, fresh caramel sauce and candied pecans.

Other items are available as well, including some gluten-free options. We sampled some of them, which you can watch in the video player above.

Secrist tells EastIdahoNews.com her mother-in-law, Jolene, first opened Sweet Temptations at the fair in 1996. The initial item she served was “giant, plate-size cinnamon rolls.”

“Sometimes cinnamon rolls are hard to eat at the fair … so we started offering pull-aparts, the same dough but in bite-size form. From there, it (evolved into our current offering),” Lacey says.

Lacey grew up baking and cooking and when she married into the family, she says it was a natural fit to be part of the family business.

Seeing customers return year after year is the most rewarding part of the business for her.

“The reputation that we’ve built by being homemade, made from scratch, family-owned — people have already been coming and they know exactly what they want. They come to our window and say, ‘We’ll be back tomorrow for raisin-filled cookies or we’ll be back for a cinnamon roll,'” Lacey explains.

Despite the vendor’s popularity, Lacey says there are no plans to open a storefront. She works as a florist full-time in Blackfoot and also stays busy as a mom and wife.

Lacey is grateful for all the support over the years and she’s excited to serve customers again at the Eastern Idaho State Fair.

“By 9:00, we usually have our doors open serving coffee and cinnamon rolls. We’ll serve you some to go after a concert at night on the way home,” she says.