Posted by The Diamondback, MD on April 30, 2008 at 10:39:52:
ROLLING IN THE DOUGH
Nandini Jammi
Issue date: 4/30/08 Section: News
For alumna Carolyn Gurtz, it's all about family.
Gurtz, who graduated in 1970, has made a name for herself through her delectable baked goods. The various pies, breads, cookies and cakes she has dreamed up in her Gaithersburg home have helped her win award after award, but the icing on the cake - or the cookie, perhaps? - came this month when she took home a cool $1 million at this year's Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest for her double-delight peanut butter cookies.
Judges said her cookie "hits you with its layers of peanut butter flavor, and that's what makes it a classic for the future."
Despite the praise, the win - she beat 99 other finalists for the top spot - was a shock to Gurtz.
"Pillsbury - it's the biggest, most revered, most well-known baking contest," she said. "Just to be a finalist is wonderful."
Before Gurtz won the highly publicized Pillsbury Bake-Off, she was no stranger to the competitive baking scene. For the Bake-Off alone, she estimates she has sent in 75 of her own recipes over 15 years - "I think some people enter, like, 20 recipes," she comments.
But before this contest, Gurtz had also won a variety of other competitions, including taking the top prize of $50,000 at a Kraft competition for her coconut cream-cheese pancakes.
"Everyone raves about her dinner rolls, her pecan pie, her pancakes and now, her peanut butter cookies," said Mike Gurtz, her 30-year-old son. "A couple neighbors dropped by; they were all saying, 'Where's the cookies?'"
But more important to Gurtz than the recognition and the money - some of which she will donate to her church and some of which she plans to spend on a granite countertop for her kitchen - is the role baking has had in defining her family. Gurtz may be modest when discussing her own accomplishments, but her love for flour, sugar and eggs is undeniable (she makes "at least a pie" a week, she says). In fact, that culinary creativity is what has brought her, her husband and her sons - especially Mike, also an alumnus - closer together.
Baking played a role in Gurtz's life early on, she said. She fondly remembers her first cooking adventures, which were as a little girl with her parents.
"My dad made breakfast on weekends; he would make me rabbit-shaped pancakes," Gurtz said. "We'd do the ears and the tails separately. That was my beginning in pancakes."
Baking and cooking stayed in Gurtz's life when she reached the university. She recalled that the dining halls used to hand out little tin boxes decorated with popular landmarks on the campus, such as McKeldin Library or the Memorial Chapel, that students could fill with cookies and give to friends as gifts.
And though she did not have a kitchen while living on the campus, she stayed active by entering local baking contests at the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair. Gurtz has been a regular since then, missing only one contest in 35 years.
Despite her winnings, Gurtz still enjoys the simpler things, such as cooking with her family, Mike said.
"Mostly around Christmastime, we try to come up with a menu," he said. "We pick it together."
The family usually goes with classics such as beef tenderloin or prime rib but have stayed away from duck. Gurtz cooked the feathered delicacy one year, but didn't anticipate that it would slip around while baking in the oven, she said.
"Duck is very greasy. I had eight ducks in the oven, and I didn't have a pan," she said.
Before she knew it, the kitchen was filled with smoke and Gurtz "was sitting there, crying with the flaming ducks."
Despite that catastrophe, Gurtz has soldiered on, she said, and is even trying to convince Mike to make his own name in baking. At the Pillsbury Bake-Off, there were only eight male finalists of the 100, and Gurtz thinks it's a ripe time for her son to break into the culinary world.
"She got me to enter in the fair as a kid, mostly desserts," Mike said. One year, Mike won first place for his pecan pie, and his current specialty is souffles, he added.
Nevertheless, Mike gives his mother the ultimate homage.
"I always thought my mom was a good cook, but now it's official that she's the best," he said.
But Gurtz hasn't forgotten her roots, she said. Each year, she still goes to the Montgomery County Fair with Mike and her husband as a "family affair."
"I told them I'd enter the Montgomery County Fair this year. It's like a family," Gurtz said. "Well, I'll make a couple of things this year ... But that's it."
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