MINNEAPOLIS — Venee Pawlowski, owner of Greensboro, NC-based Black Magnolia Southern Patisserie, was named the $20,000 grand prize winner in The Biskies Contest, hosted by General Mills Foodservice.
“Our judges were blown away by the creative and delicious biscuit recipes shared by talented contestants across the country,” said Shayna Becker, marketing manager for the restaurant channel at General Mills Foodservice. “The Biskies Contest was designed to celebrate biscuits in all of their flavors and forms, and it was a tremendous success in letting us know just how much people love their biscuits.”
The contest challenged owners, chefs and employees of commercial restaurants to create an original recipe using General Mills’ Pillsbury Southern Style Unbaked Biscuits, which give restaurants and foodservice operators a low-labor method for offering biscuits on their menus.
In her award-winning recipe, the Upside Down Apple Praline Biscuit, Pawlowski layered the biscuit with brown sugar roasted apples decorated with bourbon caramel, pecan pralines and salted toffee. The biscuits were served with bourbon buttermilk sweet biscuit ice cream made in-house for a unique textural experience.
Inspired by a tarte tatin, Pawlowski’s recipe was assembled from go-to flavor profiles she describes as warm and comforting.
“They lend themselves very well to sweet or savory things, specifically in that combination,” she said.
This is not Pawlowski’s first winning recipe. She previously won the General Mills’ Neighborhood to Nation Recipe Contest in 2020 with her Bourbon Banoffee Pecan Rolls after entering on a whim.
“The first time, I thought of one of our most popular rolls,” Pawlowski said of that first entry. “It was the most conceptualized and put together recipe I had, and it was so popular with customers that I decided that’d be the recipe I’d submit to the contest.”
After being alerted to the Biskies Contest by someone who Pawlowski had worked with in the 2020 contest, she had about a day of R&D to roll out the winning entry, getting her submission in on the last day.
Pawlowski’s husband broke the news of her win while she was going over prep work with her assistant, bringing her to tears.
“It was definitely a shock,” she said. “I knew we had at least become a runner-up, but I didn’t think that we were going to win because I was looking at all of the other places and they’re more established than we are and have bigger followings.”
With the brick-and-mortar bakery less than a year old — the bakery started as a cottage bakery in 2020, eventually scaling up to where it’s at now — the win increased foot traffic and spiked searches for Black Magnolia. The Upside Down Apple Praline Biscuit has also now found a place on the bakery’s weekend menu.
Looking ahead, Pawlowski plans to use the prize to reinvest into the bakery. She and her husband plan to transform the current pickup counter into the brand’s flagship store and have a sit-down bakery café-style concept, with a possible wedding venue in the future as well.
