Take a sugar cookie, add chocolate, nuts, jam and ice cream, top with a fresh raspberry, and what do you have? Mini Ice Cream Cookie Cups, the grand prize winner for the 44th Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. See below for some other great 44th Pillsbury Bake-Off Recipes.
44th Pillsbury Bake-Off Recipes:
Mini Ice Cream Cookie Cups
Tomato-Basil Eggs Alfredo in Bread Baskets
Salmon Pecan-Crusted Tartlets
Zesty Lime-Fish Tacos
Banana-Peanut Butter Cream Tart
Pepperoni-Pesto Popovers
Turkey Club Sandwich Ring with Avocado Aioli
Sue Compton, a single mother from Delanco, New Jersey, won the Sweet Treats category, with its $5,000 purse, in the biennial contest. Then she took home the top prize of $1 million, a GE Profile Induction Free-Standing Range and $7,000 worth of GE Profile kitchen appliances.
Compton calls the cookie cups simple and elegant, which she says makes them appealing to everyone. Contest judges were particularly complimentary of her creation.
“This recipe didn’t include many ingredients, but they were combined in the most imaginative way possible,” says Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest judge Jonell Nash, a food industry consultant and former food editor of Essence magazine.Â
“Easy to serve and still original enough to impress, this is a dessert recipe you can prepare the night before,” says Jeff Houck, food editor for The Tampa Tribune. “Nobody will know how simple it was, and you’ll still be the hit of the party.” Houck also described the dish as the “perfect portion size,” while fellow judge Carolyn Jung of Foodgal.com raved about the “souped-up, ice cream-cone cookie.”
In the other three main categories of the Bake-Off, Niki Plourde of Gardner, Massachusetts, took the top prize in Breakfast and Brunches with her Tomato-Basil Eggs Alfredo in Bread Baskets; Evelyn Henderson, Roseville, California, won the Entertaining Appetizers category with her Salmon Pecan-Crusted Tartlets; and Zesty Lime-Fish Tacos, created by Kellie White of St. Louis, was the top dish in the Dinner Made Easy category.
Three other contestants were awarded prizes. Lenore Klass, Koloa, Hawaii, won the Jif Peanut Butter Award with her Banana-Peanut Butter Cream Tart. The award focused on recipes that used at least 1?4 cup of Jif Peanut Butter.
Laura Stanke, Maple Grove, Minnesota, had her Pepperoni-Pesto Popovers singled out as the winner of the GE Imagination at Work Award, a prize given to the recipe deemed the most innovative. Heather Halonie, Webster, Wisconsin, took home the prize for the Crisco Is Cooking award with her Turkey Club Sandwich Ring with Avocado Aioli, which was deemed the best recipe using at least one tablespoon of the cooking oil. For their recipes, check our website.
One hundred contestants, representing 36 states, took part in the internationally known contest held this year in Orlando, Florida. The category winners were announced April 13, with the grand prize winner announced April 14 on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
The Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest originated in 1949, with the first competition at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The contest was held annually from 1949 to 1976, when it switched to an every-other-year schedule. The $1 million grand prize was first awarded in 1996 in Dallas, to Kurt Wait, who was also the first man to win top honors in the contest.Â
Senior Associate Editor Jean Teller attended her first Pillsbury Bake-Off in 1998, which also took place in Orlando. Several of this year’s winners will quickly find their way into her recipe collection.