CALIFORNIANS SCREAM FOR HER ... ICE CREAM! 10-YEAR-OLD'S RECIPE GETS STATEWIDE TASTE TEST.

Byline: Jeremy Bagott Staff Writer

Her flavor shook out California CheeseQuake. It 86'd 49er's Gold Nugget Crunch. And it made mincemeat of Mother Lode a la Mode.

Now all 10-year-old ice cream inventor Elysa Hill of Woodland Hills has to do is outsell one more newly minted ice cream, and her frozen homage to California will be enshrined in freezer cases from Redding to Reseda.

Grocery stores began selling Gold Miner's Dream this week, straight from the recipe Elysa submitted to Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream earlier this year. It's made of mountains of chocolate and vanilla swirl blazoned with trails of rich milk chocolate and caramel with hidden toffee nuggets.

Dreyer's has shipped tens of thousands of quarts of Gold Miner's Dream to stores across the state, where it will stay until November as the public decides whether it is among the creme de la creams and worthy of being immortalized by being added to Dreyer's half-gallon line.

Incidentally, Elysa's cream, if it rises, will also become Dreyer's official flavor of the California Sesquicentennial. ``This is really cool,'' said Elysa, a fifth-grader at Woodlake Avenue Elementary School in Woodland Hills.

Elysa's career as an ice cream developer started in the spring when her teacher at Woodlake, Verdell Gurnee, passed out contest entry blanks to her class, which had been studying the California Gold Rush.

All entries had to include a creative name and description of the flavor, somehow based on how the flavor represents the state of California, and it had to be a flavor the company could produce on a mass scale.

``Our idea was to have Californians of all ages participate,'' said Jenifer Howard, spokeswoman for Union City, Calif.-based Dreyer's. ``But we were really surprised by how many children submitted entries.''

``Elysa brought the sheet home,'' said her mom, Doreen Hill, ``and it looked pretty interesting. We're big ice cream eaters.''

Encouragement

With a half-scoop of encouragement from mom, Elysa sat down at the family computer and whipped out the recipe - no rewrites, no corrections. ``I just kinda sent it in and forgot all about it,'' Elysa said.

Doreen Hill had forgotten, too, until a Federal Express letter jarred her memory. It arrived two days before school let out for summer.

``I knew it had to be good news,'' Hill said. ``I saw who the sender was. I drove to her school with it, and we opened it together in her class.''

``Dear Elysa,'' the letter read. ``Congratulations. We at Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream are thrilled to inform you that your recent flavor submission in our Flavor of California program was selected as one of the 10 finalists. Now the fun really begins.''

``Oh my God, I thought,'' Elysa said. ``We're going to San Francisco.''

Dreyer's flew Elysa and her mother to the Bay Area for a bake, er, freeze-off.

``It was thrilling,'' Doreen Hill said. ``They put us up at the Waterfront Plaza Hotel in Jack London Square. They held a reception for us where we met the company's marketing people and Dreyer's official taste-tester.''

The 10 finalists - five kids and five adults - were presented with personalized lab coats and fitted with hair nets and hard hats. Then they were loaded into a special bus and whisked to the company's Union City plant, where the mother and daughter were given a tour and put through a tasting seminar, in which they were given tips from the taster.

Judgment day

After a special luncheon, the inventors were handed their individual ingredients. Small batches of ice cream were made and judged.

When it came time for the judging, no punches were pulled, said the company.

``The judging did get a little intense,'' Howard said. ``People are very serious about this. One of the things we stressed was balance. A flavor shouldn't be screaming caramel, for example.''

When they announced the final results at a banquet that evening, Elysa said, ``they started with No. 10, and when they reached No. 5, I was like, OK, when are they going to call me?

``When they announced No. 3, since I hadn't been called yet, we were like, oh my God! I won!''

The first- and second-place winners are now having their flavors test-marketed throughout the state. A telephone and Internet voting survey, along with sales figures, will determine which flavor is cream of the crop.

Elysa has been exchanging e-mails with second-place winner Jessica Lack, 12, creator of Hooray for Hollywood, a star-studded Vanilla ice cream swirled with caramel, star-shaped semi-sweet chocolate pieces and loaded with nuts. Jessica lives in Walnut Creek.

``The (Gold Miner's Dream and Hooray for Hollywood) flavors have been selling like mad,'' said Dreyer's spokeswoman Diane McIntyre. ``We just ordered a new run. We foresee between 90,000 and 100,000 quarts will be sold through the end of the program.''

Last week, Dreyer's sent her family a shipment, packed in dry ice, of what her ice cream would look, feel and taste like as it went to supermarkets throughout the state.

``I knew it was going to be in the stores,'' she said. ``Before that, my best friends were looking out for it whenever they went to the store. They were, like, we can't find the ice cream!''

Now, everyone she knows is helping her reach the peak of ice cream immortality.

``My friends and everyone in my family are all voting once a day (the maximum allowable),'' Elysa said.

To vote, click on the carton icon at www.dreyers.com or call your vote in at [phone]. Otherwise, just buying the flavor will automatically trigger a vote.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Elysa Hill, 10, created a new flavor, Gold Miner's Dream, for a Dreyer's ice cream competition. It is now available.

(2--Color) Elysa Hill whips up her recipe for Gold Miner's Dream at Dreyer's Union City plant during the Flavor of California competition in July.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer