Million-dollar question: What would you do if you won the Pillsbury Bake-Off?

ANNA GINSBERG

In amateur recipe-contest circles, there's an expectation that once you've won the "Big One," the Pillsbury Bake-Off, you can sit back and rest on your culinary laurels.

But not so for Anna Ginsberg of Austin, Texas, who won the 2006 Bake-Off for her Baked Chicken and Spinach Stuffing.

Since then, she's won $7,500 from Family Circle magazine for a chicken and pasta dish, and $5,000 in a Betty Crocker cookie contest. She was also a 2006 finalist in Cooking Light's Ultimate Reader Recipe Contest.

"So I'm still in the game," she said in a telephone interview from her home. "But winning the Bake-Off has taken some of the pressure off. I only enter contests I'm really interested in, and I share more recipes than keeping them secret. I'm becoming more of a cheerleader for competitive cooking as a hobby."

She's concerned that judges might recognize her name and count it against her, "but I'm still not a professional. I haven't suddenly gone to culinary school or anything. I worry about other contestants being jealous and saying that I shouldn't compete, but that's what I do."

That morning when Ginsberg answered her phone, she was experimenting with a small-scale batch of carrot cookies. She had made various versions, including some with prune baby food, and planned to report on them in her blog, Cookiemadness.net.

"It's been fun doing a blog. Through the Internet I've met people who are really obsessive about (baking), and we share ideas and recipes. I do a lot of baking. I eat a little and send the rest to my husband's office."

The stay-at-home mom, who has a communications degree, was also a Bake-Off finalist in 2004. She entered at least 50 recipes both years. "The more ideas you have, the better. It's worth entering them all because you never know what they will pick," she said.

Judges picked Ginsberg's idea of making stuffing from Pillsbury Dunkables frozen waffle sticks and using the accompanying syrup in a glaze for chicken.

"There are people who want to trash me for using waffle sticks," she noted. "But if I were a songwriter, I wouldn't expect everyone to like every song."

The night she created it, she thought she had a winner after the first bite. "But when I got to the Bake-Off and saw the competition, I didn't think so."

Two days later, she was preparing it for Katie Couric on TV.

Ginsberg reads magazines such as Bon Appetite, Cooking Light, Gourmet, and Food and Wine.

"You get ideas of what top chefs are doing and then kick them down a notch and make them easier," she said. "You don't want to do something that everyone else is doing, but just a simple twist on something. Once you get the hang of it, it's easier, which is why certain people win over and over."

Some of the prize money has gone for family trips and her young daughter's college fund.

"And I've put some of it into ingredients, because I do a lot of cooking. Right now, it's a safety net. If my car breaks down, I know I can fix it. It's given me peace of mind."

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E-mail: vphillips@desnews.com