Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 9, 1994 TAG: 9403090182
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO LENGTH: Long
About the only thing the Pillsbury Bake-Off here didn't have was someone getting whacked in the knee with a spatula.
Instead, 92 women and eight men slaved away at 100 identical almond-colored Sears stoves, hoping that creations such as ``Ham 'n Pickle Buns,'' ``Polish Pizza'' and ``Buttered Rum Banana Pecan Pie'' would earn one of them a check for $50,000 and a $10,000 kitchen makeover.
As finalist Susan Wittan put it, ``Only in America.''
How true. Nowhere else are you likely to hear ``and God bless the Pillsbury Dough Boy'' at a morning invocation. And nowhere else are you likely to hear a contestant gush, ``Being at the Bake-Off validates me as a cook and a mother.''
That was Colorado attorney and sometime actor Pamela Kenney. She won $10,000, so perhaps she was validated more than most. On the other hand, grand-prize winner Mary Anne Tyndall of Whiteville, N.C., felt that winning the Bake-Off was more like the biggest surprise of her life - next to becoming a mother again at 44.
Tyndall has two children in their 20s and a 5-year-old daughter. ``Ladies,'' she commented in her pronounced North Carolina drawl to a group of reporters, ``don't give up. Or watch out. Whichever advice you'd rather take,'' she added with a laugh.
Tyndall's winning recipe for fudgy bonbons, fudgy cookies wrapped around a chocolate kiss, had just six ingredients and took only 7 minutes to bake. ``They're great to make with kids,'' the former elementary-school teacher said. ``They always turn out.''
Tyndall wore her favorite chocolate-kiss earrings and pendant to the Bake-Off for luck.
The bake-off contest was held Feb. 21, and the winners were announced the next day.
Each contestant had to cook in a room with 99 other people, an equal number of reporters, the now blessed Pillsbury Dough Boy, dozens of Pillsbury executives, a fleet of home economists and general gofers and a pushy camera crew filming game-show host and contest emcee Alex Trebek as he hugged and mugged with selected photogenic contestants. (Not to mention the pushy camera crew filming bored-looking CBS special correspondent Melissa Rivers.)
For Wittan, a free-lance television editor from Rockville, Md., who has withstood being screamed at by ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson, being questioned by friendly food writers wasn't too bad, she said.
Still, she became a bit flustered when her garlic press kept breaking, and her thyme was missing. ``You know, I entered several recipes, and I would have put money on the others' becoming winners. I couldn't believe the one that won,'' she said, glancing balefully at the chopped ingredients still awaiting the dried thyme.
Even her sister, Joan, a three-time finalist from North Potomac, Md., got rattled by all the commotion and almost left out the chocolate chips in her first batch of Viennese brownie squares and forgot to turn on the oven for the second batch.
Although she laughed about her slip-ups, other contestants took their problems harder. One young woman left the room in tears immediately after turning in her Greek pizza for judging. ``I know the crust is soggy,'' she sobbed.
Kristen Crowley of Santa Rosa, Calif., waved reporters away as she struggled to finish her toffee mocha pie. ``The refrigerator malfunctioned, and after three hours my pie still hadn't set,'' she complained.
Problems with the refrigerators cast a chill over several of the competitors, all of whom said their pies and cheesecakes didn't get cold enough. A Sears executive said putting four or five hot pies in one refrigerator kept the appliance from cooling properly.
``Wouldn't you have thought of that before the contest?'' asked one reporter. At that moment, the Sears man saw someone he needed to talk to and left.
Other than these glitches - and a run on bandages for sliced fingers - the Bake-Off went off without any major disasters, which is not surprising considering Pillsbury has been staging this extravaganza for 45 years.
Since the first contest in 1949, Pillsbury has successfully cooked up a sophisticated mixture of corporate hype, competition and cold, hard cash.
Finalists this year, all of whom won an expense-paid trip to the historic Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, competed for $175,000 in prizes, the richest cooking contest in the business.
Back when it started, the grand prize was $25,000 - a nice chunk of change even by today's inflated standards. Pillsbury chief executive officer Paul Walsh said the four-day event costs the company ``millions.'' Just how many millions he won't say, but it doesn't really matter. The payoff for the company is incalculable.
The tens of thousands of recipes sent in ``give us an inside look at what Americans are cooking. It helps us spot trends,'' he said. And the resulting free publicity ``is priceless.''
A recent survey by the company showed nearly 80 percent of American consumers have heard of the Bake-Off contest. The first Bake-Off was held in New York City with special guest Eleanor Roosevelt.
This year contestants had to be content with the dapper Trebek. Obviously this was fine with at least one contestant, who asked during an orientation session, ``Is Alex here yet, and do you know his room number?''
The Pillsbury people declined to help on that one, but most of the time the company makes an effort to assist even the pickiest competitors. At the 1992 contest in Orlando, Fla., one contestant insisted that a fraction of an inch be shaved off the rim of the metal pizza pan she was provided. It was.
On the other hand, when Pillsbury staffers offered during the contest to baby-sit a contestant's 7-month-old daughter, the woman refused. She held the baby with one arm and chopped, sauteed and baked with the other. ``It looks great for the television cameras, but it's really unsafe,'' muttered one contest helper.
The nine judges this year determined the winners ``without much arguing,'' according to Miami Herald food editor and contest judge Felicia Gressette. ``We talked a lot about the skill level of American cooks ... how people want maximum impact for minimum effort,'' she said, explaining why the panel eventually picked Tyndall's cookies as the overall winner.
But what everyone really wanted to know was, How do nine people taste 100 dishes and live to tell about it? ``The secret,'' Gressette said, ``is to spit, don't swallow.''
Buckets are provided for each judge, ``and at first you think it's gross, but after the 12th dish, you think it's a brilliant idea.''
Recipe for Fudgy Bonbons
by CNB