Is there a secret to the winning Bake-Off recipe?

What recipe is worth a million dollars? Two Utah contestants, Cameron Bailey and Elizabeth DeHart, are gearing up to compete in the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest, with the winner announced March 27 on the "Martha Stewart Show."

It's interesting to look back at the recipes that won the million-dollar grand prize over the years. I have to admit, during the seven Bake-Offs I've covered, I've never been able to predict the winning recipe, but I've correctly guessed some of the category winners.

But when the grand prize is announced, most of the food writers are looking at each other with a "Who knew?" expression.

Suzanne Conrad of Findlay, Ohio, crushed up granola bars and mixed them with walnuts and chocolate chips to make a winning Oats 'n Honey Pie for the 2004 contest.

"It's an obscene amount of money for a really simple recipe," Conrad admitted during a telephone interview a few years ago. "I think it helped that it was simple, old-fashioned and has a different flavor. The granola bars are the only unique thing about the recipe."

Since General Mills had recently bought Pillsbury, Nature Valley granola bars were one of the sponsor products, as was Fisher nuts, Hershey's chocolate chips and Land O'Lakes butter and eggs.

The recipe has to taste good, but creative use of sponsor products also helps.

In 2006, Anna Ginsberg of Austin, Texas, won for her Baked Chicken and Spinach Stuffing. She made stuffing from Pillsbury Dunkables frozen waffle sticks and used the accompanying syrup to glaze the chicken.

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

The judges — mainly food writers, supermarket consumer folks and food personalities — take their duties very seriously. But sometimes their choices don't always resonate with the public.

For instance, Peanut Blossoms — peanut butter cookies topped with a Hershey's Kiss — didn't win anything when they were entered in the 1957 Bake-off. But the public fell in love with them, and they are still popular in kitchens across America. In 1966, the Tunnel of Fudge Cake took second place to Golden Gate Snack Bread, which was flavored with cheese spread and onion soup mix. But the cake with the molten fudgy center captured America's interest, taking the bundt pan from obscurity to booming sales almost overnight.