Each year, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board hosts a contest, the Grilled Cheese Academy Recipe Showdown, challenging home cooks to submit their best recipes for creative grilled cheese sandwiches.
This year's winner beat out more than 2,000 entries with a sandwich that pairs up America's most iconic flavors with Wisconsin cheese.
The All-American, created by Grace Gutierrez of Longmont, Colo., combines Wisconsin aged cheddar and mascarpone with gooey homemade apple pie filling on slices of churro-battered challah.
A baker and artist, Gutierrez drew inspiration from her Hispanic heritage and favorite sweet treats: churros and spiced apples. And she says she'll use her $15,000 grand prize to return to school.
Following just behind the All-American is $5,000 silver award-winning sandwich, The Bloody Mary, which showcases a medley of Wisconsin cheese curds, mozzarella and parmesan topped with a Bloody Mary relish of heirloom tomatoes, celery leaves and bacon, and served on homemade parmesan-olive bread.
Meanwhile, The Speakeasy brought home the $3,000 bronze prize with a winning combination of Wisconsin havarti and gouda, paired with caramelized bourbon-brown sugar apricots, candied bacon, marmalade-mustard spread and fried sage leaves, all served on buttery slices of pumpernickel.
And you don't have to stop drooling yet. Three Judges' Choice winners include The Cocina, The Southern Charm and The Beale Street, each of which received $1,500, inclusion in the 2016 Grilled Cheese Recipe Showdown Book of Champions and a Wisconsin cheese gift basket.
As a passionate champion of the local dining scene, Lori has reimagined the restaurant critic's role into that of a trusted dining concierge, guiding food lovers to delightful culinary discoveries and memorable experiences.
Lori is an avid cook whose accrual of condiments and spices is rivaled only by her cookbook collection. Her passion for the culinary industry was birthed while balancing A&W root beer mugs as a teenage carhop, fed by insatiable curiosity and fueled by the people whose stories entwine with every dish. Lori is the author of two books: the "Wisconsin Field to Fork" cookbook and "Milwaukee Food". Her work has garnered journalism awards from entities including the Milwaukee Press Club. In 2024, Lori was honored with a "Top 20 Women in Hospitality to Watch" award by the Wisconsin Restaurant Association.
When she’s not eating, photographing food, writing or planning for TV and radio spots, you’ll find Lori seeking out adventures with her husband Paul, traveling, cooking, reading, learning, snuggling with her cats and looking for ways to make a difference.
