__ella Schulz Recipes

__JULIA HAUBER

Steps:

• Grace under pressure--one of a cook's most necessary gifts. That's where the saying "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen" comes from. "A tornado alert once sent us to the basement for an hour," Julia Hauber remembers. "Everyone else worried about being killed. I just worried about my rare roast beef, and kept running upstairs to check it." Despite the approaching storm, Julia's guests arrived. "We had our first course, hors d'oeuvres and drinks, in the southwest (safest) corner of the basement...which unfortunately was the powder room." Amazingly, the roast turned out perfect, and grace was triumphant.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

__NANCY HINDENACH

Steps:

• How can you stack the deck to end up with a child who's a master chef? Several Bake-Off® contestants reported stories similar to the one Nancy Hindenach shared. "On Christmas, when I was nine years old, Santa brought me a baking kit full oflittle boxes of cake mixes, frostings and little pans to bake them in. I had so much fun making cakes for my family that I asked for the kit for my next two Christmases." Years later, Nancy's family is still reaping the benefit of those tasty gifts.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

__DALE GRANT

Steps:

• Once I made a German chocolate cake using a yeast dough," Dale Grant reported when asked about any cooking mishaps he had had. "I split two layers horizontally to make four layers, to put filling between them. As I prepared the frosting, the cake fell apart--much like a huge mound of dirt collapsing. All that remained of the top three layers were crumbs." Who doesn't know what that feels like? Luckily, Dale didn't get discouraged and quit, he went on to create this easy, wonderful cake.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

__ELLA SCHULZ

Steps:

• Pillsbury staffers love to notify finalists, for the happiness that accompanies the news is often profound. "There I was," Ella Schulz says, "ill, feeling lonely, my famous sense of humor pretty frayed at the edges. I made up a recipe, just one, scribbled it on a piece of paper...and forgot about it. I really was too miserable to remember anything but my troubles. Then one Sunday, I came home from church and the phone rang! Of course, the BakeOff® Contest was like a dream. . . Now whenever I have a setback, I always remember my happiness at the Bake-Off®."From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

__LEONA SCHNUELLE

Steps:

• When Leona Schnuelle captured the Grand Prize in the twelfth Bake-Off® Contest, she suddenly found herself a celebrity in her small town of Crab Orchard, Nebraska. "Everyone seems happier when I arrive, even at the square dances. They say 'Hi, Mrs. Pillsbury!' Even though I miss a do-si-do now and then-they think I can bake a dilly of a bread! And all the fan mail I receive! It's exciting to hear from all the different people with all their different ways of life, yet they all seem so interested in a bread recipe." Especially with a loaf like Dilly Casserole Bread to pique their interest.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

__ELLEN BURR

Steps:

• So much of American cooking has international roots, but a sense of what the cooking of indigenous Americans was like can be gleaned from Cape Cod resident Ellen Burr's harvest. "I love to gather wild edibles: bolete mushrooms, dandelion greens, sassafras leaves (to dry for file powder for gumbo). I pick lots of berries--blueberries, strawberries, shad berries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, cranberries, elderberries, rosehips, rum cherries, and English blueberries--for desserts, for freezing, for preserves, and for jellies. I also dig clams, gather oysters and mussels, go crabbing and fish for trout and perch." Although Ellen has devoted so much of her keen attention to native foods, she also turns to foods with an international heritage for inspiration, and comes up with hits like her Dotted Swiss and Spinach Quiche.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

__ELLA RITA HELFRICH

Steps:

• Did someone invent birthday candles? Christmas trees? Jack-o'-lanterns? If someone did, that someone deserves applause for introducing a whole lot of happiness into a whole bunch of lives.And who came up with taffy apples? Chocolate truffles? Pecan pralines? No one knows, but we know for sure that someone did invent the Tunnel of Fudge Cake, and that someone was Ella Rita Helfrich. She spent days of "trial-and-error baking" to come up with the distinctive treat, and her cake has become an American classic, one which hundreds of thousands of people make for their special celebrations.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

__GILDA LESTER

Steps:

• Earlier this century the traditional woman's work really was never done. Each week required a full day of baking, of washing and of ironing. Few would return to those days, but it did leave space for quiet family interaction that many feel is unfortunately missing from modern life. "My grandmother had a hearth oven, which she used to bake bread for the week," Gilda Lester recalls. "I helped her, and she always saved a small piece of dough for a pizza for me. I wouldn't give up those days with my grandmother for anything. I helped start the fire, then when the embers had smoldered for just the right amount of time, we cleared the oven for the loaves of bread. Most of my recipes are in my head. They are things that my grandmother, and then my mother, passed on to me."From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

_ DON'T MIND HER. SHE'S A COOK

Steps:

• * One Hawaiian contestant danced the hula for photographers as her cake baked.* A mother brought her newborn infant to the Bake-Off® Contest and set the baby basket right next to her range while she cooked.* A finalist from Washington State was extremely suspicious about the quality of eggs in New York City--so she brought her own, on the train, across the entire country.* One year a woman sat beside her stove, quietly reading, as flashbulbs popped, TV crews roamed, reporters questioned, and all the hubbub of the Bake-Off® Contest roiled around her. Asked how she could be so tranquil in all the tumult, she smiled and replied that this was nothing compared to cooking with her five small children around her ankles.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.