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Kettering woman wins national chocolate contest with ‘hazelnut heaven’
A passion for hazelnuts and love for a grandson who hadn’t yet been born helped propel Madelyn Callender of Kettering to win a national contest by Ghirardelli Chocolate to create its next flavor of dark-chocolate bar.
Callender says she was sitting in the living room of her Kettering condo earlier this year reading an issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine when she saw the Bring Your Dark to Light contest solicitation from Ghirardelli, which invited chocolate lovers to come up with its new “Intense Dark” chocolate bar flavor.
The Kettering woman doesn’t usually enter recipe contests — a member of the Bach Society of Dayton, her interests run more toward music — but she does appreciate good chocolate. And her one year of studying in France while in college gave her “quite an appreciation” for hazelnuts, which she thought would make for a fine addition to a dark-chocolate bar.
Plus, truth be told, she had a bit of an ulterior motive. The winner of the contest would score a free trip to San Francisco, a tour of the Ghirardelli chocolate-making facility, a weekend in Napa, and a $1,000 shopping spree.
Callender’s son and daughter-in-law just happen to live in Angwin, California, very close to Napa, and her daughter-in-law just happened to be pregnant with the couple’s first child. The hazelnuts-and-grandchild combination spurred Callender to action, and she came up with a contest entry for a dark chocolate bar accented with chopped roasted hazelnuts and hazelnut flavor extract. She called it “Hazelnut Heaven.”
A panel of judges combed through the 14,000 new-flavor entries and identified five finalists, and Callender’s entry made the cut. The finalists were then put to an internet vote. The results were close, but Callender’s entry won the contest with 78,000 votes, to 75,000 for the runner-up, “Cherry Bliss.”
On Sept. 27, Ghirardelli officials called Callender to notify her that she won.
“I just couldn’t believe it. I was just ecstatic,” Callender said.
She’s still finalizing plans for her trip west with a friend. Callender is a native of California who came to Dayton 34 years ago with her husband, and has stayed ever since. Her husband died in 1993.
Awaiting her in California will be son Scott, daughter-in-law Jenn, and now-3-month-old grandson Quinn.
Sometime in early 2011, Ghirardelli will begin shipping “Hazelnut Heaven” chocolate bars to stores nationwide, and that too will fill Callender with pride.
“I’ll just be thrilled to have my own creation be out there for everybody to enjoy, and for everyone who voted for me to be able to experience that as well,” Callender said.
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