The event featured a fun house, carnival rides, a shooting gallery, a sponge throw, confetti eggs, a cake walk, a makeup booth and tables laden with home-cooked foods for sale.
Usually I take the stance of the more butter the better, and indeed, Burns-Booth's cake is rich and delicious, but the plainer versions prove more popular on this occasion – they just feel more fitting to the spirit of this particular cake.
In 1886, Appleton's Dictionary of New York said that in addition to the 200-plus stalls, the south side of the building was devoted to restaurants, "coffee-and-cake saloons," cigar booths, toy dealers, stationers, bakers and ice dealers.
A live wire in skinny jeans, the superstar DJ leapt from behind his turntables to a narrow ledge ringing the DJ booth, a vanilla-frosted layer cake the size of a small Boogie board poised for launch in his hand.
The tradition is so popular that two websites have been created to tell voters where to find polling booths with sausage sizzles and cake stalls.
But somehow, for years and years, we all planned pretty weddings and made amazing memories without having photo booths at our weddings, multi-colored cake pop displays and cake toppers made to look EXACTLY like the bride and groom.
John, a gob of cake in his hand, chased Phil around the control booth while those around them danced to John's just-recorded version of an early Elvis recording, "Just Because".
(On that note: Google's new interactive map knows which polling booths are also offering sausage sizzles and cake stalls).
Burns-Booth also goes for the traditional pound cake formula of equal parts butter, sugar, flour and eggs, while everyone else employs a more parsimonious ratio of roughly half the fat to flour.
