After toying with the idea of entering the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest for years, Megan Beimer recently tossed her recipe for chocolate doughnut poppers into the ring.
She soon found herself vying for the $1 million grand prize.
"I'm still trying to enjoy the experience, because it's truly a once in a lifetime experience, and I'm still surprised to have gotten this far," Beimer said. "I'm really glad that I went for it. I really didn't think I would be going this far."
Each year, Pillsbury invites fans from across the country to submit favorite original recipes for consideration. Beimer's concoction, created during a weekend trial-and-error session, earned her a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, where she squared off against 99 other competitors for a shot at the final four in November.
Outfitted with an oven range and ingredients, Beimer had three-and-a-half hours to whip up a perfect patch of her chocolate doughnut poppers. Though a chance to compete for $1 million was on the line, "The Hunger Games," it was not.
"I guess the competitive cooking population is a pretty nice crowd," Beimer recalled. "Everyone is very supportive, and if you had downtime you were allowed to walk around and look at other people's recipes."
The verdict came in soon after: Beimer's glazed breakfast treats, which she describes as akin to a soft, but dense doughnut hole, swept the "Weekend Breakfast Wows" category.
Now her chocolate doughnut poppers are up against three other mouth-watering concoctions — Cuban-style sandwich pockets, creamy corn-filled sweet peppers and "peanutty" pie crust clusters. Beimer's fate rests in the hands of a few select judges and the public at-large. Pillsbury invites culinary connoisseurs to weigh in until Dec. 2, casting their votes online.
The early winners, though, have been her daughter, Catherine Cora Beimer, her husband, Capt. Scott Beimer, and his fellow Marines.
"As soon as they found out we were in this competition they've been wanting them, so it seems like we've been baking them nonstop," Scott Beimer said with a laugh. "They've been very popular."
He is proud of his wife and happy, for the first time in a while, to play a supporting role. After years of watching Megan Beimer deal with the challenges that come along with being married to a Marinemilitary man, Scott Beimer said he is ecstatic she is the limelight.
"Me being in the military, it's continually her having to be the one to support me and make it through the deployment and it was nice for me to be able to be in a supportive role for her," he said. "… [It's] really nice of Pillsbury to recognize a military spouse like that for all that they do for us in the military."
The Beimer family s will travel from Alexandria, Virginia, where they are staying while Scott Beimer studies law at Georgetown University, to New York City to be on hand when the grand prize winner is revealed Dec. 3. The announcement will be broadcast live on ABC's "The Chew."
