Skip to content

Gibsons woman wins Recipe to Riches

The screams of excitement were deafening at Elisa Hendricks' home Wednesday night when family and friends watched her win the appetizer portion of Recipe to Riches on CBC.

The screams of excitement were deafening at Elisa Hendricks' home Wednesday night when family and friends watched her win the appetizer portion of Recipe to Riches on CBC.

The Gibsons mother of two and human resources person for BC Housing loves cooking for family and friends on the weekends when she's not commuting to the city for work.

Through playing with an old family recipe Hendricks came up with what she calls Italian lollipops an appetizer that beat out two others able to make it to the Recipe to Riches stage.

It's an old family recipe that I kind of reinvented and it's Friulano cheese, which is the cheese from the part of Italy that my Dad is from. It's wrapped in Mortadella and then it's got a crispy coating on it and it's on a stick. So it's really crispy and crunchy on the outside and then really melty on the inside, Hendricks said.

On the Recipe to Riches show on March 19 judges loved Hendricks' appetizer, as did the hundreds she marketed the lollipops to on the street, leading her to win the competition.

The win comes with a $25,000 cash prize and Hendricks' Italian lollipops will be available in all stores that carry President's Choice starting this weekend (March 22 and 23). On the Coast Extra Foods and Super Valu sell President's Choice products.

Hendricks is off to the city to promote her new appetizer this weekend with some in-store appearances and she hopes to do the same on the Coast in the future.

While Hendricks is thankful for the cash prize, she's more excited about the opportunity for her family recipe to be sold in stores across Canada.

To me that is the biggest thing of all of this. It's just such a cool way to honour my family, where we've come from and the beautiful food I've grown up eating with my family that my parents made with the recipes that they brought from Italy, Hendricks said. It really is just such an amazing way to honour my family and the mixture of Canadian and Italian heritage.

Each week Recipe to Riches features a different food category contestants must win and on April 2 the category winners will come together on a finale show to see who voters pick for the grand prize of $250,000.

The public can earn votes by watching Recipe to Riches on Wednesday night at 9 p.m. on CBC and then answering some simple questions about the show online at http://www.cbc.ca/recipetoriches/voting.

Voting opens on March 26 and closes on March 30.