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Three Charlotte-area women all entered their first cooking contest. And all three have made it to the finals of the Pillsbury Bake-Off, the nation's most famous amateur cooking contest with a grand prize of $1million.
Tammy Love, 42, of Dallas; Amy Murphy, 35, of Huntersville, and Sonalee Trivedi, 37, of Pineville all will make the trip to Orlando, Fla., in April for the final competition.
There also are three other Carolinas finalists - Katie Long of Summerfield in Guilford County, and Candace McMenamin of Lexington and Catherine Heers of Simpsonville, in South Carolina. The list of 100 finalists is available at www.bakeoff.com.
There have been Bake-Off finalists in the Charlotte area before. Silvana Rayson of Matthews went in 2000, and Janice and Larry Elder each went several times in the 1990s. But it's unusual to have three finalists so close together.
The Bake-Off doesn't release the number of recipes entered, but usually says it gets tens of thousands for the contest, now held every other year. Besides having to include sponsor products from Pillsbury, Green Giant, Jif, Smuckers, Crisco, Eggland, Land O Lakes, Fisher Nuts and Hershey, recipes can't have been entered before and can't be taken from another source. From those thousands of recipes, 100 are chosen for the final Bake-Off.
When we reached Murphy on Monday to ask about her entry, Rancheros Crescent Rounds, she was in the hospital, where she had her fourth child Saturday. Annelise Murphy joins two sisters and a brother.
Murphy is an attorney who works occasionally for a local firm, but mostly is a stay-at-home mother. She had never heard of the Bake-Off until three years ago when she saw something on the Food Network and thought it would be fun. She says she can't wait to go to Orlando, "with many children in tow and grandparents to nanny them all."
Trivedi also is a stay-at-home mother, with two children, ages 4 and 16 months. Trivedi's husband is an emergency room physician with Carolinas Medical Center.
A native of Vancouver, B.C., she loves to cook and work with all kinds of ethnic foods and ingredients. Her recipe will be Mediterranean Breadsticks with Roasted Red Pepper Coulis. She finds time to get creative in the kitchen after her kids go to bed. "After 8, the house quiets down and it's so relaxing."
Creating also is a big motivator for Love, of Dallas. She's a patient case coordinator with Lash Group, which helps patients get their medications, but she has owned craft businesses. She has four children, including two stepchildren, and a grandchild.
"I play a lot," she says. "My husband actually does most of the meal cooking. I do most of the playing."
Her recipe, Java-Glazed Cinnamon Rolls, was her attempt to come up with something that was similar to Cinnabon but a little different.
All three women know there are other finalists in the area, but they haven't yet met. Charlotte also has a finalist on two TV cooking-reality shows, David Summey on "Worst Cooks in America" on Food Network starting in January and Carissa Laughhead St. Aubin on Bravo's "Chef Academy."
"There's something about Charlotte and food enthusiasts," said Trivedi. "Something's working."
