Pillsbury Bake-Off — Meet the Utah contestants

Two Utah finalists have a chance at the Pillsbury Bake-Off's million-dollar grand prize next week. DeAnn Hilterbrand of Salt Lake City and Karry Edwards of Sandy will be cooking their recipes at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas on Monday, with the winners announced Tuesday morning.

Thousands of recipes were entered last year on General Mills' Web site, bakeoff.com, using products from the contest sponsors, such as General Mills, Jif and C&H Sugar. One hundred were chosen. Here are the Utah finalists and their recipes:

DEANN HILTERBRAND

Background: Stay-at-home mother with children ages 3-9.

The recipe: Chicken Mole Poblano. "I love eating at Red Iguana, and I've been making mole at home for many years. But it's a complicated recipe with a huge list of ingredients. I thought how I could make it more simple by substituting salsa for some of the ingredients, and using pumpkin pie spice for the cloves and cinnamon. So it's something you could whip together on short notice. I usually make it with pepitas, but I changed it to peanut butter to qualify for the Jif prize."

Number of recipes entered: "Six, and my husband also entered one."

Experience: "This is our first time entering a recipe contest. Our family motto is 'I can do hard things.' I read about the Bake-Off in the Deseret Morning News and decided to set an example for my kids of doing something hard that I hadn't done before."

Cooking style: "I'm a taste-and-add kind of cook. I usually tweak the recipes that I read about in cookbooks, and a lot of recipes I just throw together. People ask for a recipe, and I can't give it to them because I don't measure a lot. But for the contest, I had to be very specific."

The prize money: "If we win, we'll go to Disney World. I'm a stay-at-home mom and have thought about going back to work, but that would relieve the pressure and allow me to stay home."

Advice: "I looked at the Bake-Off Web site to see how the recipes were written and tried to make the recipe concise and clear with as few words as possible. Also, you should list the ingredients in the order they're used."

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CHICKEN MOLE POBLANO

Prep time: 20 minutes

Start to finish: 45 minutes

1 cup thick and chunky salsa (Old El Paso preferred)

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter (Jif preferred)