More Pillsbury Bake-Off Details and such

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My Bishop called me at work to tell me he enjoyed reading about me and my Pizza Pretzels over breakfast. You can read the story HERE. It was published in the Deseret News by Valerie Phillips who we spoke to both in traveling to Orlando and various times during the Bake-Off contest. I think she did a really great job capturing the moment and some of my memories.

I have to admit, I kind of liked being in the limelight a little bit. Coming back to life and my jobs and various responsibilities is so much less glamorous. I teach 12-13 year old girls at church. I teach 18-30+ year olds at UVU. I advise 22-85+ year olds at BYU. A lot of people depend on me. So, I'm just saying it was kind of nice to have the tables turned a bit and have people treating me like I was some kind of special or something. The unofficial youngest one of the contest. I liked that role. I liked representing Pizza Pretzels.

As a direct consequence of coming back to "reality," I have tons of recipe ideas currently being milled over in the "research and development" area of my and Hylan's minds. He's so nice to listen to all of my babbles and offer some good feedback and some ideas that further spur ideas in my mind. He may even submit a few recipes for the next Bake-Off.

Just so you know, when you submit a recipe to the Pillsbury Bake-Off contest, your recipes are given a number and no other identifying feature is attached. The whole batch of tens of thousands of recipes are sent to an independent company who stews over them and checks for originality and creativity and then sends a list back to Pillsbury. So, at that point Pillsbury receives the hundreds of recipes and narrows from there, but again without any other identifying feature--just the recipe itself.

And as far as the judging of the contest goes, the panel of judges are selected from an independent agency (Pillsbury does not make any awarding decisions after selecting the finalists) and they are told not to read anything about the contest for a year prior to the event. They don't know anything about us as contestants and are solely judging the recipes as they are received on contest morning. If you want to know more, you can read this article posted by one of the judges from the 44th Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest held in Orlando, Florida.

So, there you have it, if you were curious. I thought it was kind of cool to be in the know.

The Pillsbury Bake-off wrap up

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It's over! After an entire year's worth of excitement, planning, preparing and baking, the competition came and went.

I can't say enough good things about Pillsbury overall and all of the wonderful staff and finalists I met while in Orlando (and since I'm still sitting in an airport for another 5 hours, I will).

The Hilton at the Bonnet Creek resort was pristine and grand. We had a lovely 3 nights there and wish we could have stayed long enough to glide down the lazy pool river on a tube.

Florida was green (I told everyone it was still winter in Utah because it was when we left) and warm, mostly sunny, although a bit windy a good half of our trip.

As for the Bake-Off itself. Well, since I already posted the itinerary, you sort of know what I was doing. On competition morning, Monday, I ate too much for breakfast, wondered about the bathroom break they promised, smiled for the cameras, and clapped my way down the aisles as we paraded to our range number. The second batch of pizza pretzels was perfect enough to send to the judges. I sent some over for display and photography. I was swarmed when I finally put out my "please sample" sign and all the while I smiled, danced, and winked at Hylan in the distance during the three and a half hours I was on the contestant floor. Oh, the lights. The attention. The drams. And all of the great positive feedback. It was an experience never to be forgotten and one to be repeated if ever I can come up with another clever recipe.

Although it was disappointing not to win any additional awards, 92 other contestants and I can say we still had a good time partying it up on the dance floor Monday night. We were treated like royalty the entire time. How can you complain about that?

I'm leaving a myriad of details out because I think long blogs are hard to read and if you're that curious, you can always ask me. But this much I will say, it sure made me feel good when the president of Pillsbury talked to me and told me how she and the staff were making bets (literally) on who would win the entire contest and she picked my recipe! :) Too bad it was up to an independent judging panel of mostly food writers. She was extremely complimentary and kind to me and I think that made my whole experience. That combined with the director of the bake-off saying she made my recipe for the 4th of July at a family function and that her grandkids loved my pretzels. She sat with Hylan during the awards ceremony and also expressed how much she hoped we'd be back for the next one. All of the Pillsbury people were so great--even asking me if I was "okay" despite not winning. Yes, I was fine, perhaps a little disappointed, but I had 5 days left to go spend with Mickey at Disney, so I couldn't be too unhappy. I was sad that it was such a short amount of time that we spent with everyone including Pillsbury staff, media, food buyers, hotel staff, the other finalists and their guests.

But that's life. Here are some pictures from the event and from Disney. Thanks to Hylan for taking most of the pictures. They also gave me a disposable camera at my range, so if any of those are any good I may scan and post them later.

If you want to see other pics, go to Valerie Phillip's blog on desnews.com and the pics on Pillsbury's blogs

And here are some Disney pics.

Goodbye Orlando.

You asked for a Pillsbury Itinerary

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Just for Lynn and any other interested readers:

Sunday, April 11, 2010

8:30AM - 3:30PM* - Hotel & Contest Check-In
10:00AM - 3:30 PM - GE Appliance Orientation
11:30AM - 1:30PM - Lunch
3:30PM - 5:30PM - Contest Orientation & Group Photo (Finalists Only)
7:00PM - 8:30PM - Welcome Dinner
8:30PM - 10:00PM - GE Appliance Orientation (make-up session)

Monday, April 12, 2010

6:30AM - 7:30AM - Breakfast and Remarks
7:30AM - 7:35AM - Breakfast Dismissal
7:45AM - 8:00AM - Line up for Grand March
8:00AM - 12:00PM - 44th Pillsubry Bake-Off® Contest
11:30AM - 1:00PM - Lunch
1:00PM - 1:30PM - Finalists Awards Program Orientation (Finalists only)
6:00PM - 11:00PM** - Cocktail Reception, Dinner and Awards Program

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

6:30AM - 8:30AM - Breakfast
8:00AM - 2:00PM - Departures

*We're actually arriving on Saturday and I hope to go to dinner with my parents and cousins that night.

**If I win my category (the 4.3% chance thing) I'll have to fly to Chicago Monday night to get ready for Oprah on Wednesday. Hylan would fly out on Tuesday. If not, I'm going to Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Kennedy Space Center, and the Orlando temple for the rest of my vacation (Tue-Sat).

Any other questions?

This may be the last you hear from me before I get back, because I'm not sophisticated with an iPhone or Droid or whatnot, so I won't be connected to the cyber world.

If I don't win my category, still watch Oprah on Wednesday, April 14th to see if I'm in any footage. LOVE YOU ALL. Wish upon me lots of love, luck, and lollipops!!

Sorry if you're tired of hearing about Pillsbury

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More articles I didn't know about.

• PTIT Chef
• Salt Lake Tribune

Jackie, from the Oprah show just called me and asked me random questions like, "If your recipe were a celebrity who would it be?"

I ask you the same question. What celebrity would pizza pretzels be?

And yet another article

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Thank you Deseret News for running this article. Yeah, I'm the second picture. I just found out from the food editor, Valerie, that they ran this today. This is all so dramatic. I wasn't nervous about any of this until the big Oprah announcement.

What a life.

Pillsbury and Oprah

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So, last week there was some breaking news on the Pillsbury front. Wanna be in the know?

For the first time in the contest's 60-year history, Oprah Winfrey will announce the winner of the 44th Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest live on her show, Wednesday April 14th.

That means if I win my category (4.34% chance), I will immediately fly to Chicago to be on the Oprah show.

Whoa that was big news, Emily.

I have to admit that kind of freaks me out a bit. Rest assured, if I don't make it to Oprah, I am still enjoying my sunny Florida vacation. So it's a win-win. You can be happy for me either way... and so will I.

Hoppy Easter Food

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So, I had some time this weekend to dedicate to cooking. Yum. I made several items to take to our Easter feast at my sisters. She supplied the ham, potatoes, and home. And these are the items I brought.

• Can't go wrong with Rice Krispy treat eggs (use an actual plastic Easter egg to shape and voila!
• Call it a crazy Pennsylvania Dutch tradition--I don't know where it comes from--but we ALWAYS had pickled beets and hard boiled eggs at our Easter feasts growing up. I'm sorry if beets offend you, but really, they are delicious. Have you ever tried a pickled beet? Then don't hate.
• I tried out this recipe for "pickled asparagus" as well. It's just asparagus marinated in a vinaigrette and it was tasty. I would recommend using pencil thin asparagus--they just didn't have any at my grocery store at the time. They were still bathing at the time of this picture (sorry naked asparagus.)

And then there were these beauties--homemade crescent rolls (sorry Pillsbury--I had to demonstrate my true domesticity). Wow, if I do say so myself. Shots are pre-oven and post-oven.

My strawberry pie didn't turn out beautiful because the fluted edge toppled on to the bottom of the crust while baking (and it was supposed to be no fail crust!), but the deliciousness still reigned supreme. And who doesn't like to top it off with a little homemade vanilla whipped cream with tangy cream cheese? Who, I ask you? This recipe is from Cook's Country (America's Test Kitchen), which I can't link because it's a paid recipe site, however, I bet if you google it, you'll find it somewhere--and believe me, it's worth finding somewhere. And the crust was delicious (butter, cream cheese, flour, sugar, salt--no ice water needed) pressed into the dish instead of rolled, I just didn't get the pretty edge attached well enough. Lesson learned. Sometimes food doesn't have to look pretty to taste pretty.

So there it was. By no means perfect. By no means the prettiest. But I sure had fun getting back to my roots in the kitchen. And with that I take all the lessons learned because there was a slight flaw to all the recipes I made. The eggs could have been cooked a minute longer and peeled better. The asparagus should have been thin. The crescents got an extra dose of sugar because I halved everything but forgot when I was dumping sugar--they weren't overly sweet and no one complained, but I knew they could have used a little less sugar and a touch more salt and left to rise overnight instead of refrigerated. And then, well I already discussed the pie.

That's that. Maybe someday in the future when I'm not working two jobs I can be a real food blogger and get a fancy camera and take fancy pictures of all the awesome stuff I make. And also, perhaps not have as many mental errors when making new recipes. But not yet. For now I'll just savor the few moments I get to have in the kitchen...experimenting...creating...ahhh...those are the things I dream about.

In Eons

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I'm in desperate need of a blog. Today is the first day in eons that I've actually come straight home after work. I even had dinner at 5:30pm instead of 8:30 or 9:00pm. What a relief?! The craziness that is my life will settle a little this week before I'm off to O-town this Saturday.

Expect more blogs this week. There is a HUGE Pillsbury announcement coming--and I mean BIG. Like, Oprah show big. So yeah, just stay tuned for more excitement to come!