Maybe if there were enough fairy-tale endings to go around, Cindy Schmuelling would have won that $1 million last week at the Pillsbury Bake-Off in Orlando, Fla. Unfortunately, after baking her very best Milk Chocolate Butterscotch Cafe Cookies, she came home to Fort Mitchell without a cash prize.

        But no one's calling her a loser.

        Friends at the dentist's office where she worked as a dental assistant had to convince her in the fall to enter the contest. Everyone who had eaten her cookies, brownies and chocolate cake knew she was a great baker. She was the only one who doubted her abilities.

        Then she started waking up nights with recipe ideas banging in her head. Cookies from a nearby coffee shop inspired her qualifying bake-off entry. To her batter she added butterscotch chips along with chopped chocolate bars, and the recipe testers at Pillsbury loved her Cafe cookies.

        Ms. Schmuelling still remembers that day before Thanksgiving, when the dentist's receptionist came back to tell her she had a call from Pillsbury. The office staff stood around as she picked up the phone to hear she was one of the 100 finalists. They clapped, laughed and cried, and didn't accomplish much else that day.

        It was a new experience for Ms. Schmuelling. She had never entered a cooking contest, much less won anything.
       

Sobering diagnosis

        She was still in the clouds two weeks later when she went to her doctor complaining of a nagging pain in her shoulder. Tests showed a tumor invading the 40-year-old's liver. The ovarian cancer she thought was gone had returned — even more sobering news,considering Ms. Schmuelling's mother died from breast cancer at age 52.

        Her doctor wanted to perform surgery in January. But the long recovery period meant she wouldn't be able to make the trip to the bake-off, canceling her new-found dream.

        “I told him I needed something really good to happen,” she said.

        While she began chemotherapy, Ms. Schmuelling convinced her doctor — and her husband, Ray — to postpone her cancer surgery until after the Bake-Off.

        She was headed to the Land of Disney, where the sun shines warmly in February — and good things happen.
       

Along for the ride

        In Orlando, Ms. Schmuelling made new friends and felt well enough to climb on rides at an amusement park. Tuesday morning, she marched into the hotel ballroom with the other finalists, clapping to the music, smiling broadly.

        She wore a floppy blue cap because she couldn't wear her wig near the hot oven. Chemotherapy caused her hair to fall out. A contestant nearby, a cancer survivor, recognized the cap and came over to wish her the best.

        At her range, Ms. Schmuelling set about making her cookies, carefully cutting the chocolate bars to mix into the dough. The baking sheets weren't wide enough for her cookies to turn out fat and round as she planned. She chose the best-looking ones, carefully stacked the cookies on a plate and took them back to the judges' table.

        Later, company patriarch George Pillsbury dropped by to nibble one of her cookies. She put the wig on to pose for her official contest photo.

        “I'm having the time of my life,” she said.

        The next day, when Marie Osmond didn't call her name as a winner during the awards show, she cried a little. Her trip was over. She was going back home to the bitter winds of Kentucky, more chemotherapy and surgery.

        But something good did happen in Orlando. There's more hope in Cindy Schmuelling's green eyes.

        “This has given me confidence,” she says. “In two years, if I'm still here, I'm going to enter the Bake-Off again.”

        And for that fairy-tale ending, we all have hope.

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Pillsbury Bake-Off winning recipes
       

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