A Beloved Dessert Reinvented! Carrot Cream Cheese Ice Cream Bar Recipe Wins $25,000 Grand Prize In Scharffen Berger Adventure Contest

HERSHEY, Pa., April 8, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker today announces the winners of The Chocolate Adventure Contest 2013. As part of the contest, culinary adventurers at all skill levels were invited to develop an original bar recipe using Scharffen Berger Chocolate and at least one of twelve "Adventure Ingredients." Home cook Carolyn Beard from Frisco, Texas won the $25,000 Grand Prize for her original Carrot Cream Cheese Ice Cream Bars recipe— a refreshing and inventive ice cream based interpretation of a classic, beloved American dessert.

The Carrot Cream Cheese Ice Cream Bars recipe consists of creamy, handmade carrot-puree infused ice cream shaped into square bars. Each entire bar is covered in a "shell" of melted Scharffen Berger 62% Semisweet Chocolate Chunks mixed with coconut oil.

"I love Scharffen Berger chocolate and the Chocolate Adventure Contest. And I love the excitement of working with adventure ingredients," said Beard. "I kept thinking about what to do with carrots. Once I landed on the idea of carrot cream cheese ice cream bars, I couldn't wait to try to make them."

The star-studded judging panel included some of the country's foremost baking and chocolate experts: John Scharffenberger, founder of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker; Alice Medrich, award-winning cookbook author and chocolate expert; Matt Armendariz, food photographer and owner of MattBites blog; Angie Dudley, owner of Bakerella blog and creator and author of Cake Pops; and Marcia Gagliardi, founder of Tablehopper.com.

"This year's winning recipe reflects the essence of The Chocolate Adventure Contest: an inventiveness and risk-taking in recipe creation, an ingenious concept and flawless execution with delicious results," said Alice Medrich, whose most recent best-selling cookbooks are Seriously Bittersweet, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies and Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts.

In addition to the Grand-Prize-Winning recipe, the following 14 Culinary Honorees were recognized for recipes that embodied a spirit of adventure and a creative use of ingredients:

• BCC Banana Mousse-icle Bars, Vivian Graves-Myers, Norris, Tennessee
• The Bollywood Bar, Deb Stoner, Portland, Oregon
• Carrot Coconut Joy Bars, Maria Rokas, San Francisco, California
• Hot Toddy Bourbon-Caramel Ice Cream Bars with Chocolate, Hazelnuts, and Sea Salt, Jennifer Burke, San Francisco, California
• Whiskey Business Bars, Jennifer Kenny Nguyen, San Francisco, California
• Thai Nougat Bars, Rachelle Ferneau, Potomac, Maryland
• Chocolate-Covered Coconut Kaya Ice Cream Bars with Salty Sesame Dust, Edwina Gadsby, Hayden, Idaho
• Spicy Glazed Ramen Sesame Bars, Deb Stoner, Portland, Oregon
• Fruitti D'Italia Chocolate Bark, Rachelle Ferneau, Potomac, Maryland
• Caye Caulker Candy Bars, Patterson Watkins, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• No-Bake Chocolate Covered  Crouton Toffee, Barbara Eastabrook, Rhinelander, Wisconsin
• Chocolate Pandemonium Pistachio Halvah, Susan Asonovic, Wilton, Connecticut
• Pandan in Paradise Bars, Liz Saidi, Los Angeles, California
• Bourbon Street Pudding Bars, Richard Swanson, Waterford, Connecticut

Carolyn Beard receives a $25,000 cash prize, a custom selection of Scharffen Berger Chocolate and copies of Alice Medrich's Seriously Bittersweet and John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg's The Essence of Chocolate. Each Culinary Honoree receives a special Scharffen Berger Chocolate engraved Apple iPad® Mini. (Note: iPad® is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. Apple, Inc. is not a sponsor and has no affiliation with this contest.) The grand prize winning recipe will be featured on ChocolateAdventureContest.com, ScharffenBerger.com and TuttiFoodie.com.

For additional information about The Chocolate Adventure Contest 2013, plus this year's grand-prize winning recipe, please visit www.ChocolateAdventureContest.com.

Learn more about Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker at www.ScharffenBerger.com.

About Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker
Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker was established in 1997 in San Francisco, California, and first earned national recognition for its artisan-quality chocolate in 1998.  Producing bean to bar premium chocolates, Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker is one of the world's finest chocolate makers.  All Scharffen Berger chocolate is composed of proprietary bean blends from up to nine different cacao-growing regions throughout the world.  Scharffen Berger chocolate has received recognition throughout the U.S. for its high quality chocolate. Scharffen Berger products are sold by retailers nationwide and through its website www.ScharffenBerger.com.  Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker is part of the Artisan Confections Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Hershey Company.  For more information, please visit www.ScharffenBerger.com.

About TuttiFoodie
TuttiFoodie is the guide for adventurous food and drink lovers nationwide who care about a sustainable world.  Each week, the site emails a brief, informative and witty tribute to an off-the-beaten-path food, drink, food-related book or blog, or culinary travel adventure. TuttiFoodie has been featured on NPR's Splendid Table, on popular foodie sites such as epicurious.com, chow.com, YumSugar and elsewhere.  The blogosphere tipped its hat to the site early on, with one San Francisco food blogger naming TuttiFoodie, "the Daily Candy of food."  For more information please visit www.TuttiFoodie.com.

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