.
“In the 1970s, she’d been given this three-pound box of chocolates and two layers, lovely big heavy box of chocolates, by someone, a friend she’d done something for. But she didn’t feel like she had a special occasion to actually eat the chocolates,” she says.
“It became the family joke, you know, ‘is Queen Anne still in the freezer?’”
Excited by the find, Adams snapped a few photos before rushing home to store the box in her own freezer. It remained there until the Christchurch earthquakes struck. With the power out for several days, she couldn’t bring herself to check whether the chocolates had survived.
Ethne Stewart was born in 1912 and died in 1994. Ethne never threw any of her ‘treasures’ out. It is likely that the old Queen Anne Special Fancy box of chocolates came from Ethne’s husband, Ivan, because most of her treasures were gifts from him.
Supplied / Queen Anne Chocolates
Years later, as Queen Anne approached its 100th anniversary in 2025, she finally looked.
Apart from a little bloom, the white film caused by cocoa oils rising to the surface, they were in good shape, Adams says. She contacted a conservator at Christchurch Museum for help.
“[The conservator] did freeze-thaw tests, probably for many months, just to see what would happen. Long story short, they are now proudly displayed at our factory at ambient temperature, just humidity controlled, looking beautiful.”
Carrying on her grandfather’s legacy
Baker and businessman Ernest Adams.
Supplied / Queen Anne Chocolates
With a passion for baking, Adams left her degree as a young woman and became one of only two women in the country at the time to complete a baking apprenticeship.
“Even after my grandfather retired, he and my grandmother would go into the bakery every week, and it was quite an undertaking. They would spend an hour walking around the bakery – they knew everyone by name.
“It was a joyful occasion when they took me, because I would eat my way around the bakery. And my favourite was the decorating department because I always slipped those lovely little icing decorated flowers. I usually had a pocket of them by the time I left.”
At the heart of Queen Anne’s Easter range were their iconic marshmallow-filled chocolate half eggs – an original creation that became a hallmark of the brand.
Supplied / Queen Anne Chocolates
But entering a male‑dominated industry came with challenges.
“There wasn’t much appetite for me to be taken on as an apprentice and took quite a bit of, I’d say, maybe dogged determination to work my way through that,” Adams says.
“I remember when I first started my apprenticeship and I started in the weighing up department, which was great fun. It was reasonably heavy work because there was a lot of lifting, no machinery in those days. But I soon realised that I was going to have a few difficulties.
“The two gentlemen, they were older gentlemen who were in the weighing up department, old school, could not bear to see me lift heavy bags like sugar bags and flour bags.
“So, we had this sort of agreement that I would only do that when they were off at morning tea, because if they couldn’t see me doing it, they were okay.”
The various Queen Anne chocolates over the years before the original factory shut down, including butter mallows, coffee creams, kismet, and jellies.
Supplied / Queen Anne Chocolates
In 1976, the factory where the chocolates were made was shut due to costs and, in the following years, Ernest Adams Ltd was sold to the multinational company Goodman Fielder.
While out of a job, Adams had been writing her grandfather’s biography for The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Immersed in the stories people shared, she realised how much history hadn’t been recorded.
“I wanted to create [the book] because when I relaunched Queen Anne, it was so difficult to find all the information and the history.”
The project, which involved recovering original recipes, sparked her interest and she eventually secured a deal with the West Coast ice cream company that owned the Queen Anne trademark so she could revive the chocolates.
In 2022, Goodman Fielder quietly discontinued the Ernest Adams range. Adams only learned of it when contacted by media.
“I felt very sad. Not just for me personally, it’s like any business, you know, it’s like when you hear about the likes of the Watties and things closing down, there’s so many companies that have been intergenerational and been part of Kiwis’ lifestyle.
“It is sad, and I think that I’m of the belief that businesses and brands can keep on going.”
Her grandfather died when she was 12, before she had the chance to sink her teeth into a business mindset and quiz him. But she carries with her what she calls “the Queen Anne way”.
“It’s good old‑fashioned business. It’s the way business used to be done on a handshake, and people could rely on each other.
“People cared about what they were doing, what they were making. I guess that’s it in a nutshell.”
