Lynn Pillsbury Bake Off participant: Vote for me!

LYNN – Lesley Pew has entered the Pillsbury Bake Off for more years than she cares to admit, and for the first time she has made it to the semi-final round.Now she needs the public’s help to get to the finals.”Right now I need people to vote,” she said.Pew has a long history of entering cooking contests, although she said she doesn’t enter nearly as many as she used to. But the Pillsbury Bake Off is the granddaddy of them all, and she would like a shot.The first Pillsbury Bake Off was held in 1949 and until 1996 the grand prize was $50,000. It is now $1 million.To get in the running Pew said she first had to submit a recipe to Pillsbury. There are three categories to choose from: Doable Dinners, Quick Rise and Shine Breakfast, and Simple Sweet Starters. Pew chose the latter because “I like fudge, my husband likes fudge, everybody in the family likes fudge.”According to the rules Pew had to create a recipe using Pillsbury products chosen from a specific list. She said she likes German chocolate cake and decided to use chocolate and coconut to create a sort of German chocolate fudge. She added toasted pecans to the final product and it landed her in the semi-finals.”They picked about 100 semi-finalists,” she said. “Those are online, and people can vote on them.”If Pew picks up enough votes for her coconut-pecan-chocolate creation she will move on to the next round, which takes 34 cooks to the finals.”It’s been kind of fun,” she said. “They already sent me an apron but I wouldn’t mind getting that million dollars.”Pew said if she wins she would like to travel and get herself a new computer, because hers is very slow.Voting is open until 11:59 a.m. CST on Thursday and to cast your vote for Pew go to www.pillsbury.com/bakeoff. The winners will be announced online after voting has closed.Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].