The 43rd Pillsbury Bake-Off took place last April 14, 2008 and Carolyn Gurtz, a 59-year-old homemaker from Gaithersburg, MD, took home the grand prize of $1M. The winning recipe is for the Double Delight Peanut Butter Cookies you see above. Carolyn also won $5,000 from JIF Peanut Butter because the product was her recipe’s main star.

The website for the Bake-Off is HERE, but I’m posting the winning recipe below as well. I’m not a peanut butter fan and this seems like it might be too sweet, but you might like to try your hand at it. I’m curious to see what a cookie worth a million dollars actually tastes like!

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INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup Fisher® Dry Roasted Peanuts, finely chopped
1/4 cup Domino® or C&H® Granulated Sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup JIF® Creamy Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Domino® or C&H® Confectioners Powdered Sugar
1 roll (16.5 oz) Pillsbury® Create ‘n Bake® refrigerated peanut butter cookies, well chilled

DIRECTIONS
1. Heat oven to 375°F. In small bowl, mix chopped peanuts, granulated sugar and cinnamon; set aside.
2. In another small bowl, stir peanut butter and powdered sugar until completely blended. Shape mixture into 24 (1-inch) balls.
3. Cut roll of cookie dough into 12 slices. Cut each slice in half crosswise to make 24 pieces; flatten slightly. Shape 1 cookie dough piece around 1 peanut butter ball, covering completely. Repeat with remaining dough and balls.
4. Roll each covered ball in peanut mixture; gently pat mixture completely onto balls. On ungreased large cookie sheets, place balls 2 inches apart. Spray bottom of drinking glass with CRISCO® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray; press into remaining peanut mixture. Flatten each ball to 1/4-inch thickness with bottom of glass. Sprinkle any remaining peanut mixture evenly on tops of cookies; gently press into dough.
5. Bake 7 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. Store tightly covered. High Altitude (3500-6500 ft): No change.

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A friend (hi, Maggie!) has been on my case for the past three years or so to join the Bake-Off. Ever since I learned how to bake, it’s actually been my dream to do so. Maggie doesn’t know this, but every time she mentions it, my heart starts to race! That’s a good sign, yes? The contest takes place every two years and if I wanted to join the 2010 run, I should start thinking about it now.

I don’t know why it’s such a scary thing for me. Another friend has already volunteered to eat all of my experiments and, at the very least, the exercise of creating and submitting the recipe should be fulfilling in itself. Aaah, I can’t think about it too much or I may just keel over! To even just be a finalist would be great. But I kind of want to have a picture of myself like this when my name’s announced:

Teehee. Ok, I’ll THINK about it.

Inspiration: Mary Ann Esposito’s Salmone al Cartoccio con Spaghetti di Seppia Nera (Salmon in Paper With Black Ink Spaghetti)

Creation: Salmone al Cartoccio Kuno

Didn’t have black ink spaghetti, but really wanted to give this package of bowtie pasta from Rome a chance.

(Vi, what does the writing on it translate to?)

By the way, that package of pasta was on a shelf among many other packages of pasta shaped like, well, that part of a man that makes him a man. For the love of the gustatory gods, why?!? I mean, I don’t know if those were novelty/souvenir items. I hope they were. I hope people in Rome don’t eat that everyday. I wouldn’t! Ahaha.

By the way, despite the number of pictures, this was very easy to do! And by far, it’s the moist tender and moist salmon I’ve ever made in an oven. I’ve never done salmon right – I always dry it out. The parchment thing absolutely works in steaming the fish to perfection and sealing in all the flavor from the pasta (fresh thyme, shallots, balsamic vinegar, etc.)

You can find the official recipe for Mary Ann Esposito’s Salmone al Cartoccio con Spaghetti di Seppia Nera HERE.

Happy salmone!

Mary Ann Esposito is the chef/host of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) show Ciao Italia. When I first came to the US and didn’t have a job yet, I spent my days devouring cooking shows on the Food Network. Those shows fed me in more ways than one and I became a devotee.

But then, as I channel-surfed one afternoon, Mary Ann came into my life. I caught her just as she was breaking up some chocolate for her Torta di Vino Rosso, a cake that intrigued me because the main ingredient in it was red wine. (If you can’t drink it enough, might as well eat it too, yes?)

She wasn’t a big-named celebrity chef with cult status. She didn’t have a line of cookware named after her, nor did she have olive oil bottles with her face on it (sorry, Rachel Ray.) She was unassuming, genuine, warm and reminded me of my Tita Jesse (who is one of the most genuine souls I know.) She welcomed me into her kitchen (albeit a studio one) like that one aunt you have who always seems to be lost in the steam of pots and pans, always whipping up meals that fill both your stomach and your heart.

Since then, I try to catch Ciao Italia on PBS whenever I can. One thing I like about the show is how Mary Ann ferrets out these authentic cooks in Italy and interviews them as they make their signature dishes right in their rustic kitchens. She talks to them in that beautiful language as she explains to the hopelessly un-Italian viewer (me!) how each dish is comes together from fresh, local ingredients and flavored with the locale’s history.

I once caught an episode where a cook named Filomena made pasta with flour, olive oil and eggs. Her hands looked like they had many stories to tell, kneading life into dough and deftly shaping it into delicate fusilli with a metal skewer. I would love to meet Filomena and have her teach me how to make pasta from scratch!

I also visit the website often, as it’s brimming with must-try authentic Italian recipes. The site has this great Recipe Box feature, where you can store all the recipes that interest you. I’ve tried my hand at several of them (including one you’ll see above), but my first was the Red Wine cake that introduced me to Mary Ann five years ago. It’s been a delicious ride ever since.

Beyond the lights of Kitchen Stadium or the speed of a 30-Minute Meal, grazie a Dio* for chefs like Mary Ann, whose quiet instruction allows home cooks like me to discover and explore other culinary avenues.

* Vi, did I get that right? Teehee.

For the longest time, I’ve had a master wishlist of things to bake/cook. Like anyone interested in baking and cooking, I have an ever-evolving, gargantuan list of all of my want-to-bakes: French macarrons, Sans Rival, Buche De Noel, petit fours, panettone, panna cotta, a proper English trifle, buko pie like the ones they used to sell in El Ideal in Silay City…the list is as long as my memories of food (and those are historically plentiful.)

But, there’s a Special List. I’ve started calling it the Dandelion List, because when I get the chance to wish on a dandelion, more often than not, I will wish for the gumption to start making the things on this list. It’s been in my head since I was 12 years old, when I first made a cake all by myself (an all-together-too-rich butter cake with buttercream frosting from Let’s Cook With Nora). I realized then that maybe if I gave baking a chance it would do me the same favor, so I’ve been baking (and wishing) ever since.

The Dandelion List is different because it’s made up of dishes from the wonderful cooks in my family – on both Mama’s and Papa’s sides. These are the legendary recipes that I’ve had to think twice about recreating. Why? Because there are delicious standards to live up to! And I often feel that a successful dish doesn’t just depend on a tried-and-true recipe, but on the person wielding the wooden spoon. If it’s your signature dish, no one can quite make it like you. Cooking is a science, yes, but it’s partly magic as well. As the cook, you impart your own brand of sorcery to any dish you make.

But I DO want to try, even if these talented cooks set the bar pretty high. Because I often think about how the hands that made those dishes were fashioned from the same genetic cloth as my own. The attempt is my way of honoring not just the culinary history that’s so much a part of my family names, but the potential in me to bake as well as they can.

So, here is the GWAC’s Dandelion List Of Deliciousness. One that I hope to tackle, one cup of flour (or rice!) at a time.

       The GWAC’s Dandelion List Of Deliciousness

Lola Pin’s Daffodil Cake

Tia Minda’s Parker House Rolls

Auntie Betty’s White Chocolate Raspberry Cake

Manang Cynthia’s Empanadas

Lola Pin’s Sago Pudding with Meringue

Mama’s Hopia

Tia Minda’s Orange Chiffon Cake

Manang Flo-Flo’s Siakoy

Mama’s Callos

Tito Boy’s Tuna Ceviche

Tito Boy’s Paella

Lola Pin’s Fresh Pineapple Candy

P.S. The yellow dandelion image you see above is actually beautiful fabric that the UK company St Jude’s carries. They have the prettiest fabric with eclectic designs made by their own roster of artists. Another great craftster resource is the St Jude blog All Things Considered, with art news and design ideas from that country across the way, one I hope to visit some day.

There’s this TVC for HP Printers with Gwen Stefani that’s grown on me. It was released last year but I’ve been catching it on TV a lot these past few days. Makes the craftster in me say, “I know what she means.”

Official website HERE.

The site has many fun things to do, like custom-make your own greeting cards, CD covers and mini posters with designs by Gwen. So much to do with all these do-it-yourself printables. Not only are they free, but the possibilities are endless.

Just imagine this on an apron (through the wonders of photo transfer paper):

Or this on an oversized tote bag (a chica way to lug groceries?):

On the site, you can even make a Harajuku-inspired paper doll version of yourself.

This is me. Teehee.

Happy Harajuku days to you!

My brother introduced me to the blog todaysinspiration.blogspot.com, a hub for illustrations from the 40’s and 50’s. It houses all these cool, vintage comic strips and hand-drawn art that I can spend hours looking at. It’s another way to enjoy an interest in retro fashion and art, in the hopes that one day I may be able to sew a capelet in the style of that era, or maybe a swingy skirt or two.

I found this comic strip ad for Scotch Brand Tape that cracked me up. In it, a plaid-wearing Scotsman named Scotty McTape offers sewing tips to a distraught craftster.

I love the idea of using tape to “baste” a seam. Though I suspect this would make my grandmother turn over in her grave.

They even “talk” in rhyme! Eyelovit.

There may be many dinnerware companies and brands out there (just browse through these dizzying collections from Martha Stewart, Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel,) but Corelle holds top spot in my heart.

Growing up, I ate the best meals on Corelle plates. Mama had (and still has) an almost pious devotion to the brand and sent them whenever she could from the US. She believed that only Corelle could withstand the rigorous cross-continental trek in a Balikbayan Box from Los Angeles, CA to Victorias, Negros Occidental. And she was right. Through all those years, we never received a broken plate, cup, saucer or bowl as we unearthed the treasures from those brown boxes. That was good, and not just because nothing was wasted — broken plates were believed to be a sign of ill luck. I don’t know if the superstition is specifically an Illonggo one, but I have strong memories of it growing up. I remember always being somehow relieved whenever there were no broken plates hiding between the Spam and the Betty Crocker Devil’s Food Cake Mix in those boxes!

We ate a lot so we wore those plates out. These days, we still have Corelle in the house, but I have a sentimental attachement to the Corelle pattern of my childhood, Old Town Blue, which is the image above. They don’t manufacture it anymore and whenever I see it in flea markets, it always tugs at my memories like a child at her mother’s apron strings.

The company now makes many new, hip designs and in more modern shapes, too. Whole new sets to fall in love with! My favorites:

Vintage Lace

Whimsical Dots

Kitu

Here’s hoping your plates remain whole — and brimming with good memories.