I ate breakfast with the butter cow every day during the 2019 Iowa State Fair.

I was working the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox, so I took a daily morning pilgrimage to the Agriculture Building for my free egg on a stick. The butter cow looked on from the coolers in the side of the building, an impassive munch mate.

When COVID-19 forced the Iowa State Fair to cancel its 2020 event, I knew I would miss the giant slide, the cold lemonade and the ungodly number of corndogs I'd consume. I’d miss the people-watching and the fun stories. And I would miss my beloved morning ritual with my egg and the butter cow.

So I did what any rational state fair fan would do. I made a butter sculpture at home.

Sarah Pratt, the longtime butter sculptor with the Iowa State Fair, led a seminar teaching Iowans how to make creations from their kitchens this week. Pratt was going to sculpt a dog, so I decided to do the same.

I needed all the guidance I could get.

The sculpting process began with a bit of engineering. Full-size butter sculptures have complex, heavier armatures, made with welded metal and PVC pipes. Those structures are then covered with a hardware cloth before butter is molded on top.

Rather than pull out my welding helmet, Pratt had a simpler method for at-home sculptors. She instructed viewers to stab a carriage bolt — basically a large screw — through a piece of foam, essentially creating a base with a single, upright metal pole. 

Easy. I was a butter-sculpting prodigy. I was going to crush this.

Then it came time to add butter.

The idea was to stab the stick of butter onto the bolt, standing it up like a small, greasy skyscraper. Pratt advised sculptors to first create a hole with a smaller instrument, like a chopstick.

I jabbed a chopstick in. The butter started to splil down the sides.

Pratt assured viewers that some small cracks could be fixed, so I went happily along with the process, despite the gaping holes in my soon-to-be sculpture. I grasped the stick by its wrapper, which I had pulled off halfway, and pushed it onto the bolt.

The butter split fully in half, one side falling to the base with a wet thunk.

Discouraged, I tried again with a second stick, this time going slower. It was still imperfect and cracked on the sides, but I got it standing on the bolt. I smoothed it with my fingers and filled the cracks with butter cannibalized from the first stick. Good as new.

A professional butter sculptor would have been appalled at my methods. Pratt told me before the seminar that she had two pieces of advice for new butter sculptors: Keep the butter cold and try not to touch it with your hands.

To create the massive sculptures at the State Fair, Pratt and her teenage daughters work in the cooler, which prevents the butter from melting. They use frozen butter, recycled year after year, which they can warm with their hands and then work with pottery tools. 

My stick of butter stood upright, but was slimy and covered in fingerprints. I stuck it in the freezer and hoped for the best. 

Pratt put her example project in the fridge and pulled out a rough sculpture of a dog, made ahead of time. The details hadn’t been added yet, but the rectangle of lard had a body and head and ears that my rectangle did not.

Unfortunately, Pratt spent the rest of the lesson discussing the different tools she and her daughters use in the cooler, as well as the history of the butter cow. She did not explain how to move from a stick to a dog.

I chopped two pats from my first failed attempt and put it on either side of the stick, creating shoulders, kind of. It looked like a Minecraft villager.

I was overcome with despair.

Videographer Olivia Sun and I scribbled on my reporter’s notebook, trying to remember what a dog looks like. Should I add butter to just one side? Where should the legs go? My sculpture melted judgmentally on the counter.

Eventually I figured out the key would be to add a butt, keeping the front of the dog straight like the stick. I could use more butter to add little legs to the front and back legs to the sides of the main rectangle.

To create the head, I would cut an inch off the top of the stick — it was way taller than it needed to be — and then use that excess butter to create ears and a snout.

Still using my hands to do the sculpting like some kind of butter caveman, I went to work, drawing on years of art class coil-pot experience. I blacked out with artistic focus. 

Somehow, it came out looking like a dog. Here’s my piece:

And here’s Pratt’s:

With my hands, my computer and my editor’s kitchen covered in a thin layer of grease, I was done. It's a purebred Saint Ber-lard.

I think next year I’ll stick to breakfast with the butter cow.

Katie Akin is a retail reporter for the Register. Reach her at kakin@registermedia.com or at 515-284-8041. Follow her on Twitter at @katie_akin.

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