We baked up the Bake-Off finalists. Which won?
WHAT DOES a million-dollar recipe look like? A pocket of dough enveloping ham, cheese, pork and pickles?

WHAT DOES a million-dollar recipe look like?
A pocket of dough enveloping ham, cheese, pork and pickles?
A swirl of biscuit wrapped around corn-and-cheese-filled sweet peppers?
A sweet cluster of white-chocolate-drizzled peanuts, peanut butter and crispy pie-crust pieces?
Or baked, glazed doughnuts with hazelnut-chocolate filling?
To find out, we at Philly.com went to stove to prepare the four top recipes of this year's Pillsbury Bake-Off contest and put them up for an informal vote around the office.
But first, some background. Earlier this month, the 100 finalists gathered in a hotel ballroom in Nashville, Tenn., to cook and bake their recipes, which fell into four categories: Doable Dinners, Savory Snacks & Sides, Simply Sweet Treats and Weekend Breakfast Wows.
Judges selected four category winners. (Sadly, none of our Philly-area recipes got the nod.) To choose the $1 million grand-prize winner, Pillsbury put the winning recipes up to a poll on Facebook. The judges' opinions will count for some of the tally, but much of the decision is in the public's hands. Voting ends Dec. 2. The winner will be named on ABC's "The Chew," on Dec. 3.
With that in mind, we divvied up the recipes.
Philly.com photo editor Steph Aaronson, whose oven is not the greatest, grabbed the easiest recipe, the Peanutty Pie Crust Clusters, by Beth Royals, of Richmond, Va., which won the Simply Sweet Treats category.
Product manager Nickki DuBan took what may have been the toughest: Creamy Corn-Filled Sweet Peppers, by Jody Walker, of Madison, Miss., winner of Savory Snacks & Sides.
Listings editor Allie Volpe baked Chocolate Doughnut Poppers, which won the Breakfast Wows category for Megan Beimer, of Alexandria, Va.
I made the Amazing Doable Dinners category winner: Cuban-Style Sandwich Pockets, by Courtney Sawyer, of Bellingham, Wash.
Into the fire
Aaronson's clusters were a hit and a simple recipe, too, though not without struggles.
"My baking skills have never been great, and my kitchen is not nearly as well-stocked as I thought," she said. "My old oven was creating a lot of smoke and my brand-new fire detectors went off 12 times."
A self-described natural procrastinator and perpetual night owl, DuBan waited until after work the night before the office bake-off to buy her ingredients for Creamy Corn-Filled Sweet Peppers.
"Bad move," she said. "This was actually what I considered the most complicated part of the recipe. I went to three different supermarkets to find the sweet peppers. . . . None of the three had the corn called for in the recipe, and none of the stores had the Pillsbury baking sheets" or the correct brand of Italian seasoning.
The most tedious part of the prep was making the crescent strips to wrap the peppers in. To sub for the missing baking sheets, she used cans of crescent rolls and smushed the perforations together.
"Overall, the appetizer took a little longer than I like to prep, so I probably won't put this recipe into my 'to make for friends' folder," she said.
Volpe seemed to have signed up for an easy recipe in Chocolate Doughnut Poppers. "Surprisingly so, actually," she said.
"I found all the ingredients in Walmart. The recipe was as simple as placing a dollop of hazelnut spread onto a square of Pillsbury, baking it and putting a simple glaze on top with some nuts."
Volpe calls herself "a dessert weirdo" who prefers baking - especially easy baking. "Anything that requires minimal ingredients [check], minimal cleanup [check] and minimal time consumption [check], I'm on board for," she said.
I had help for the Cuban-Style Sandwich Pockets - my 3-year-old twins, whom I instructed to poke holes into the pastry squares to allow steam to vent.
Gently, I advised. They ignored me. I ended up patching their work.
The recipe was straightforward: cut dough into thirds, spread on a mustard mixture, lay on ham, cheese, ground pork and pickle chips, fold it into a pocket and bake. The hardest part was finding the Pillsbury Crescent Recipe Creations refrigerated seamless dough sheets. Pathmark had them.
Having attended the Bake-Off and seen these recipes made both by the finalists and the culinary pros at the Omni Nashville for a photo shoot later, I can safely say that ours looked, well, homey.
Or homely.
What mattered was the taste. Even in our amateur hands, they all tasted just as they had at the contest.
That said, no dish emerged as a favorite among our tasters. The peppers certainly looked elegant and colorful, and the filling was rich. The Cuban pockets had the proper zing. The poppers got a great reception. And who doesn't like peanuts and peanut butter and crunchy things bathed in white chocolate?
So we'll call it too close to call - though, as a former judge, I saw an edge to the peppers.
Here is that recipe; for the other three, go to pillsbury.com. You can vote at vote.bakeoff.com.
CREAMY CORN-FILLED SWEET PEPPERS
1 bag (11 ounces) Green Giant Steamers frozen honey-roasted sweet corn
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon Watkins Italian Seasoning
11 mini sweet peppers (3 to 4 inches long), cut in half lengthwise leaving stem attached, seeded
1 can Pillsbury Crescent Recipe Creations seamless refrigerated dough sheet or 1 can Pillsbury Refrigerated Crescent Dinner Rolls (8 rolls)
3 tablespoons butter, melted
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line large cookie sheet with Reynolds Parchment Paper. Microwave corn as directed on bag. Cut open bag; cool 10 minutes.
In large bowl, beat cream cheese with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Add corn, a half-cup of the Parmesan cheese and a half-teaspoon of the Italian seasoning; mix well. Place cream cheese mixture in large resealable food-storage plastic bag. Cut off a half-inch from corner of bag. Squeeze bag to pipe filling into each pepper half.
Unroll dough. (If using crescent roll dough, firmly press perforations to seal.) Press to form an 11-by-9-inch rectangle. With pizza cutter or knife, cut dough into 22 9-by- 1/2inch strips.
Wrap a dough strip around each pepper, from stem to tip. Place filling-side up on cookie sheet, tucking ends of dough under pepper.
Bake 12 to 18 minutes or until golden brown.
Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix melted butter and remaining half-teaspoon Italian seasoning. Remove peppers from oven; brush with butter mixture. Sprinkle remaining Parmesan cheese evenly over peppers. Serve warm.