__ella Rita Helfrich Recipes

TUNNEL-OF-FUDGE CAKE

Steps:

• Place a heavy baking sheet or pizza stone on a shelf in the lower third of the oven. Heat the oven to 350 degrees (see note).
• On a large baking sheet, roast nuts in the oven for 10 minutes. Keep watch that they do not burn. Pour into a bowl, and add 2 tablespoons butter and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Toss well and set aside.
• Generously butter the inside of a large 12-cup Bundt cake pan.
• In a mixer, beat butter to soften until it becomes fluffy. Add sugar, then the brown sugar and continue to beat until airy. While beating, if the bowl does not feel cool, place it in the freezer for five minutes, then resume beating.
• Beat in 3/4 teaspoon salt, vanilla and vegetable oil.
• Beat in two egg yolks. Crack the four whole eggs into a large mixing bowl. With a small knife, cut yolks and barely stir the eggs, minimally blending the whites and yolks.
• With the mixer on the lowest speed, beat the eggs into the batter in three batches. Mix in confectioners' sugar and the cocoa.
• In a large mixing bowl, stir flour and nuts together. Then with a spatula stir the flour-nut mixture into the batter. Pour the batter into the Bundt pan.
• Bake for 40 minutes. You cannot use the toothpick test because the cake contains so much sugar that the center will not set but will remain a tunnel-of-fudge. You are dependent on a correct oven temperature and the 40-minute cooking time.
• When removed from the oven, the cake will have a runny fudge core with an air pocket above the fudge. About 30 minutes after taking the cake out of the oven, press the inside and outside edge of the cake bottom down all the way around to minimize the air pocket. Let the cake, still in the pan, cool on a rack for two to three hours. Invert the cake onto a platter and let cool completely.

__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.

__LILY WUEBEL

Steps:

• Part of Pillsbury's reason for starting the Bake-Off® Contest was to celebrate the many unsung heroes of America's kitchens, who hadn't received public credit for the trays of cookies, the platters of cakes and the baskets of bread that issued from their kitchens.Of course, for every Bake-Off® winner, there is still an unpublicized kitchen hero for whom the appreciation of her family is reward enough. Lily Wuebel was lucky enough to have both. When asked what he thought of his wife's $25,000 cake, Peter Wuebel said he'd always loved the cake, and "it's worth a million 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.

__BOBBIE SONEFELD

Steps:

• Most people hear about Roberta (Bobbie) Sonefeld's Bake-Off® 2000 Contest win and immediately zero in on the $1 million Grand Prize she was awarded for her decadently rich Cream Cheese Brownie Pie. But Bobbie says the richest part of the experience was the Bake-Off® weekend itself, a dazzling trip she and her husband, Steve, have christened their "second honeymoon."The 2000 Bake-Off® Contest took place in the San Francisco Marriott, an opulent hotel in downtown San Francisco. "Neither of us had ever been to the West Coast," recalled Bobbie. "The way Pillsbury treated us was just great: Three gourmet meals a day plus all kinds of tours and sightseeing." An added benefit, said Bobbie, was that "all the activity had a calming effect." When the day of the cooking contest rolled around, "I was used to the idea." Didn't she get nervous? "Well, yes," she admits, "But I didn't get the butterflies bad until the night before. The next morning--once I was done baking and there wasn't anything I could do about it--I was fine. Then I thought, 'Wow, I already feel like a winner, it doesn't matter what happens next.'"What happened next is part of history: Bobbie's Cream Cheese Brownie Pie, entered in the Fast & Fabulous Desserts & Treats category, won the Grand Prize. The Sonefelds' second honeymoon became even more extravagant, as they jetted to New York City for a whirlwind round of television and radio appearances. They also went to Philadelphia to appear on QVC. Bobbie remembers New York as another great restaurant town where she had meals she never even dreamed of two weeks before.After an amazing week traveling the country together, Bobbie and Steve returned home to Hopkins, South Carolina, their full-time jobs and their family. And that's when the trip stopped being a honeymoon, and turned into a homecoming, as Bobbie and Steve returned to the loving arms of their very excited sons.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.