A simple but elegant compound butter recipe has earned an Ohio woman a cool $5,000 and a trip to the Big Apple.

New Albany, Ohio, resident Teresa Ralston has been named Grand Champion in the 2nd annual national recipe contest hosted by Plugrá European-Style Butter. In addition to $5,000 in cash, Ralston receives a trip to New York City where she’ll prepare her winning recipe alongside one of the city’s top chefs on the Taste of New York cooking program. You can find her prize-winning recipe here.

This year’s competition recognized the top compound or flavored butter blend, and for Ralston, that was a distinctive blend of Plugrá European-Style Butter and bleu cheese, melded with fresh herbs, garlic and toasted walnuts. Ralston’s winning butter was selected from among 900 entries nationwide and judged by a panel of chefs from the Plugrá Culinary Center. The contest ran from April through August of this year. Fifty runners-up received butter bells crafted by a master potter, designed to help the entrants keep their innovative butter blends fresh and creamy.

As the name implies, compound butters are a mixture of ingredients added to a primary base of Plugrá European Style Butter. According to the experts at Plugrá, butter blends are one of the fastest-growing trends in cooking today. Butter combinations enhance any number of foods and are easy and affordable solutions for food enthusiasts. ‘Compound butters are an excellent way for chefs and food enthusiasts to express their culinary creativity,’ says Plugrá Chef Trip Kadey. ‘They’re perfect for adding bursts of flavor to entrees, vegetables or desserts and can be made with whatever strikes one’s fancy—in-season fruits and vegetables, favorite herbs and spices—literally the sky’s the limit when it comes to compound butters.’

Ralston’s Bleu Cheese Herb Butter with Walnuts would make the perfect accompaniment to a prime rib or another cut of steak, according to Kadey. But food enthusiasts shouldn’t stop there. ‘What makes this so much fun is that you can try any flavor combination that inspires you,’ he says. ‘From savory to sweet and in-between, the possibilities are endless.’

Visit http://www.plugra.com to learn more about the contest and view the winning recipes.