Julia Child doesn’t give a recipe for Puff Pastry in her almost-encyclopedic Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Or rather, the recipe she gives is for the simple little piped (or flung from a spoon) blobs of dough that we know as cream puffs.  To get the Real Puff Pastry, the kind you roll out and use to make untold incredibly flakey concoctions, you’d have to make your own.  And that, I can tell you, requires long and tedious folding of butter into dough many many many times.  Or you can go to the supermarket and buy Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry.

If that’s what you’re going to do–and if you have a yen to enter the growing cooking contest arena, then have a go at this: Better Homes and Gardens, in partnership with the Pepperidge Farm® Puff Pastry brand, is encouraging home chefs everywhere to enter the 1,2,3 Puff! Recipe Contest for a chance to win a trip to The Big Apple!

Contestants may submit up to three entries, one for each category: appetizer, main dish, and dessert. To enter, contestants must create an original recipe with Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets or Shells and upload a photograph of the finished recipe to www.123PuffPastry.com/contest.

Entries must be received by December 31, 2009. Finalist entries will be displayed on www.123PuffPastry.com and visitors may vote for their favorite entries from January 15 through February 1, 2010. The Finalist with the overall highest number of votes will be revealed in March 2010, will win the Grand Prize of an exciting trip to New York City and may have their recipe featured in an upcoming issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Additionally, there will be three First Prize Category Winners, each of whom will receive a prize package of professional baking supplies and the Better Homes and Gardens Complete Book of Baking cookbook.

If you decide to enter, let MidLifeBloggers know.  We want to follow your top chef journey–and stuff the ballot box on your behalf as well.