Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest

In 1949, the Pillsbury Company in Minneapolis celebrated its eightieth anniversary. To promote Pillsbury’s Best Family Flour, it created the Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest, later named the Bake-Off, to discover the country’s best amateur bakers and recipes. The winning recipes were placed in Pillsbury flour bags as an incentive for consumers to purchase one of Pillsbury’s premier products.

In 1949, the contest offered entrants six entry categories: breads, cakes, pies, cookies, entrees, and desserts. Hopeful bakers completed entry forms and sent in their recipes. If they included a seal from a Pillsbury flour bag, their potential prizes were doubled.

Pillsbury home economists evaluated thousands of entries and selected one hundred finalists after baking and sampling the entries. The finalists’ prizes included a trip to New York City, a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel with breakfast in bed, and $100. They all also won a General Electric Stratoliner push-button range and a Hamilton Beach mixer. The grand prize of $25,000 was awarded after all of the finalists’ entries were prepared and judged. In the first contest year, there was only one division. In 1950, it was split into two divisions: junior (for ages twelve to eighteen years old) and senior (for those nineteen and older).

Arthur Godfrey and Art Linkletter, well-known radio and television personalities, hosted the contest in the early years. Eleanor Roosevelt, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Mamie Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Truman were among the celebrities at early contests. Philip Pillsbury, company president and grandson of company co-founder Charles Pillsbury, led contestants to their stoves at the opening of each contest from 1949 until 1984.

Memorable recipes from the Bake-Off include Dilly Casserole Bread (1960), French Silk Chocolate Pie (1951), Tunnel of Fudge Cake (1966), Peanut Blossoms (1957), and Chocolate Praline Layer Cake (1988). Peanut Blossoms cookies, with a chocolate kiss in the center, are still found on many Christmas cookie trays, but the Tunnel of Fudge Cake is probably the most famous. Baked by Ella Helfrich from Texas, it won second prize and was so popular that it created a demand for the Nordic Ware bundt pan.

In 1969, Edna Walker from Minnesota won the grand prize with her winning recipe for Magic Marshmallow Crescent Puffs. The recipe was a milestone since it was the first winner to use a refrigerated dough product. Home bakers rushed to make the recipe. Grocery stores in the Twin Cities area soon ran out of cans of Pillsbury Refrigerated Crescent Dinner Rolls, the recipe’s key ingredient.

Perhaps to attract the judges’ eyes, many contestants were creative in naming their entries. Examples from 1954 include Watermelon Tea-Ettes, Pear-adise Chocolate Dessert, Cranberry Coconut Holidainty, and American Piece-A-Pie.

In 1949, there were three male contestants. In 1998, there were fourteen, which set a record. In 1996, Kurt Wait won the first million-dollar grand prize with his Macadamia Nut Fudge Torte. Twelve-year-old Richard Klecka won the junior division in 1962 with his Cheeseburger Casserole.

The contest evolved as Americans’ food tastes and interests changed. Time available to spend in the kitchen lessened and convenience foods became available. Pillsbury home economists shortened and adapted winning recipes to include Pillsbury products such as cake, frosting, and hot roll mixes and cans of refrigerated dinner rolls and biscuits. In 2013, contest rules required that recipes have fewer than eight ingredients and take no longer than thirty minutes to prepare, not including baking time.

From 1949–1956, the contest was held in New York City. After that, the location changed each year, but never in Pillsbury’s corporate home of Minneapolis. Each year, the hundred winning recipes were published in a cookbook that initially cost twenty-five cents.

The first contest, in 1949, was so successful that it was held annually until 1976 and then every two years until the 47th competition in 2014. By then, winner selection had evolved along with the recipes themselves. In that year, the public voted online, without tasting the entries, and picked Peanutty Pie Crust Clusters as the winner. The other competitors for top prize were Cuban-style Sandwich Pockets, Creamy Corn-filled Sweet Peppers, and Chocolate Doughnut Poppers. As of 2017, the future of the contest is undetermined.