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You guys sound like a bunch a kids that got their toys taken away on the playground. The Bake Off Rules simply state - bring a recipe to the table and bake it! Your baked goods will be judged and the prize awarded. It doesn't say you have to "FORK & TINES” or that you can not use "premade shortcuts" or any of the other horrible things you guys have said. Shame on all of you!

I bake cookies with the kids across the street all of the time. When you are bake with 4 to 6 kids under the age of 7 they don't want to "FORK & TINES" they just want QUICK cookies and into the oven. Of course they want them to taste yummy at the end. As for the person that said "My only problem is the recipe didn't specify salted or unsalted peanuts; I made them with salt and the sweet/salty" maybe you should enter it next year who knows you might win. The gal or guy who wrote ... Off the top of my head I got: Listerine strips, Junior Mints, Sour patch kids, Andes mints (the free ones at Luby's), MSG, Flintstone vitamins, Grape Dimetapp, the same dough that you're wrapping it in, sunflower seeds, granola bar, assorted starbursts, maybe an air cookie, Rolos, sweet and sour duck sauce, and a tryptophan cookie...well that is just sick. I guess you think all of that was funny, but the funny was the "hiding a ball of peanut butter in a peanut butter cookie" But it DID WIN!

Where has our joy for the winner gone - the celebration of the ideas of the cooks? Regardless of how simple they might be. If you don't like the "hiding a ball of peanut butter in a peanut butter cookie" enter something yourself. Frankly for me - I'm to busy having fun baking cookies with the neighbors kids. Why not send a note simply saying have fun spending your $1,000,000.

I just had to tell all of you that I was very disappointed in your comments!

Remember all of us cooks have to stick together isn’t that what it is all about?

A recipe, according to Webster's, is a set of instructions for making something from various ingredients. That makes this and other recipes calling for the use of convenience food ingredients "real." The contest is clearly designed to generate recipes using specific brand-name products. If that's not your thing, look elsewhere for your recipes.

oh geez, I was expecting a real recipe. =(

@ptrap - congratulations on making it to the finals! I used to enter the State Fair of Texas contests before moving to Arizona and there were a couple SFT ladies in the finals, too. One, Gwen Beauchamp, won the fan's favorite recipe (or whatever it was called).

I just came back from the bake-off as a contestant. And I read lots of blogs where people complain that its just using pre-made or pre-packaged stuff. Yes, I cringed a little when Sandra Lee told us all that we were all "semi-homemade chefs". But that's kind of the point of the contest. To enter, you are given two lists of assorted Pillsbury and other sponsor related products. Your recipe has to include at least one item from each list. That really limits what you can make. And that's why you see some really weird combos pop up in this contest. For me, it was just the fun of entering and the very remote chance of winning $1 million; I wasn't trying to create the next great American recipe. I will enter again next year; it was fun!

a million dollars for that. AWE come on now.

Recipes like this really disgust me. Aside from the aforementioned "faux" culinary hoax, whoever heard of a recipe for cookies with a minor yield of just twenty-four? That's just enough to make me really mad!!!

So, Ed: You ate a cookie worth $41,666.66 dollars! ($1M ÷ 24 cookies)

Totally disappointing. This is supposed to be a contest where skill, creativity and originality are key requisites. What the hell happened? Me thinks it's all about the money, NOT the aforementioned. Just my opinion, but had to comment on this outrageous excuse to promote Jiff, Ready Made Cookie Dough and Crisco.

I don't get how this is a million dollar winner. It reminds me of Sandra Lee's faux "cooking". Oh wait, look who's the host...

Does it seem they are just picking a recipe that will fit nicely on the back of a package? Or specifically, in this case the back of a bag of "fake n' bake" cookies.

Ed, I would gladly be your puppet entry ;) You could enter under my name and when "we" win, we split the prize. blahahahhaaaa.