Whole Foods Pecan Recipe Contest Results!

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Drum roll, please… And the winner of the Whole Foods contest “Your Best Recipe with Pecans” is pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies!! Yeah!

(photo source)

I mentioned it briefly in my latest post, but in case you missed it, my recipe did, in fact, win the contest! I am pretty darn excited. So cool! The results were announced on Friday, January 13th, which as I had mentioned earlier last week, is a lucky day in my family in general and it’s also my mom’s birthday. So to me, it’s even cooler that I found out my recipe won on the lucky day of January 13th!! Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to vote for my recipe online and to cheer me on. It really means a lot to me! I’ve had multiple friends and family let me know that they’ve already made the recipe or intend to make it soon. I hope everyone enjoys it! You can find the original recipe either on my blog here or on the Whole Foods Market Cooking website.

For those of you who follow my blog regularly (thank you!), you probably already know quite a bit about me. However, if you’re interested in learning more random details about the “Barbershop,” on the Whole Foods Market Cooking blog today, there’s a little “Q & A” session about me! You can learn things I’m sure you’ve always been curious about…you know, like if I was reincarnated as a single dish, what would I be, or does my ideal dinner party include 2, 4 – 6, or 8+ guests? You can find the answers to those questions and more over on the Whole Foods blog!

I also wanted to thank a lovely friend and fellow blogger, Jeanne from Adirondack Baker, who wrote a blog post over the weekend about my victory in the contest. So thoughtful! Take a few minutes to look over Jeanne’s blog; you won’t be disappointed! She creates some amazing goodies in her kitchen. I am continually amazed by her talent in the kitchen! Some of my favorite posts are about her cake creations, like this super cute snowman cake and her grandson’s treasure chest cake she made for his third birthday.

Also, I wanted to talk about cinnamon baking chips for a minute. A few friends and family have contacted me, wondering where they can buy them. Well, some Whole Foods stores may carry them, but I haven’t bought them there yet. In the Boston area, I’ve found them at both Shaw’s and Stop and Shop stores. I believe that my mom has bought them before at Hannaford in NY state. If you’re unable to find them near you though, you can always resort to buying them online! Amazon actually has a decent price for the Hershey’s brand cinnamon chips, which is the brand I most commonly use. Many different brands of baking chips make cinnamon-flavored ones though! They are sooo yummy. If you’ve never baked with cinnamon chips, you really need to give them a try!

(photo source)

Lastly, a big thank you to Whole Foods for hosting such a great contest! For all you cooks, bakers, bloggers, and foodies out there, I’d recommend that you check out the various recipe contests that Whole Foods Market Cooking sponsors on a regular basis and I’d encourage you to enter one of your own recipes. I was completely surprised when I made it to the final two and even more surprised when I actually won! Overall this was a really fun, positive experience that makes me love Whole Foods even more than I did previously! I’ve recently begun shopping there more regularly now that we have a store in the town where I live and work; it opened last November. It’s the smallest Whole Foods store in the country (at least that’s the rumor I’ve heard!) and I love it. They even carry local pork from my super small hometown in rural upstate NY. Pretty neat!

Now, I’m pretty sure that what I’ll be doing this week is heading to Whole Foods and using my winnings to buy $100 worth of ingredients to make several dozen pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies. 😉 I have a lot of friends, family, and coworkers who have requested samples of these prize-winning cookies since they so nicely voted for my recipe without actually tasting them!

Thanks for listening to my ramblings here today, friends! I’ll leave you with one more thought:

Found this awesome saying on Pinterest. So perfect!

🙂

Read Full Post »

Whole Foods "Your Best Recipe with Pecans" Contest: I’m a Finalist!

Hey friends! So just yesterday in my post about baked parmesan tomatoes, I reminded you that today Whole Foods would be announcing the two finalists for the “Your Best Recipe with Pecans” contest, and I asked for your good luck wishes that my cookie recipe would make it… Well your good luck vibes must have worked because my pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies made it to the final two! Woohoo! I am quite excited. 🙂

Now I am going to so kindly ask you to please head on over to the contest website and vote for my recipe, if you don’t mind! To vote, you do need to create an account, but it only takes a very quick minute, I promise. And you don’t have to choose to get the Whole Foods Market Cooking newsletter if you don’t want to, but I recommend that you do! The newsletters have some wonderful recipes, cooking tips, etc. 

What I love about this contest is that someone actually made the recipes that were submitted to test them out! I think that’s very cool that someone physically followed my recipe in a test kitchen to see if it was worthy of becoming a finalist. You can read her impressions here too. Neato. 🙂

Thanks for your support, friends! You have until 12:00 p.m. ET on this Friday the 13th to vote! Yes, that’s Friday the 13th. It’s always been considered a lucky day in my family, so I’m hopeful! And January 13th is my mom’s birthday too, so that makes it even better.

I’ll be back again soon this week with a great winter recipe of a delicious baked potato soup!

Read Full Post »

Pecan, Cranberry, Cinnamon Chip Cookies

Hello blog friends and happy 2012 to you! I’m especially excited about this year since 2012 is the year I’ll be getting married. 🙂 Only 306 days to go! It’ll be here before we know it…

Although our wedding is clearly on my mind, there’s another very important thing on my mind at the moment. What might that be? Well, it’s pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies, of course!! I made these cookies over this past weekend to share with friends on New Year’s Eve, but I also made them because I wanted to submit a recipe to a Whole Foods recipe contest that was for “your best recipe for pecans.” Once I taste tested one of these cookies and knew they were pretty darn yummy, my hope of submitting this recipe to the contest was confirmed. Check out my submission here. 🙂 The entries are narrowed down to two final recipes on January 10th. Wish me luck!

Ingredients:

-6 oz. unsalted butter, melted

-1 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup sugar

-2 large eggs

-2 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 cup all-purpose flour

-1 cup whole wheat flour

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. ground cinnamon

-1 cup chopped pecans, toasted

-3/4 dried cranberries (e.g., Ocean Spray craisins)

-3/4 cup cinnamon flavored baking chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the chopped pecans on a baking sheet; toast in the 350 degree oven for 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove and set aside to let cool. Melt the butter in the microwave and allow it to cool slightly. Using a whisk, combine the butter and both sugars together in a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon. Add this flour mixture to the butter and egg mixture and fold until just combined. Fold in the pecans, dried cranberries, and cinnamon chips until well-incorporated, but be careful not to overmix.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop cookie dough by the tablespoonful on baking sheet, placing at least 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 – 14 minutes. When the edges are just lightly golden brown, remove from oven. Allow the cookies to cool on the sheet for a couple minutes before removing to cooling rack. Once fully cooled, the cookies can be stored in an airtight container. Makes 30 cookies.

I was very pleased with the flavor and texture of these cookies. The combination of the three ingredients – pecans, dried cranberries, and cinnamon chips – may be a new favorite flavor combination of mine! I bet this would be a yummy combo for muffins too….

 This recipe is very versatile too. You could easily use all whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour instead of half of each like I did here. And if you’re not a fan of any of the ingredients, substitute away! Different flavors of baking chips, other nuts, etc. could be interchanged without a problem.

Hope everyone’s 2012 is off to a great start thus far!

Read Full Post »

Easy Pumpkin Crumble Cake

Greetings, friends! About a week ago I was busy making this pumpkin crumble cake to have for Thanksgiving dessert with my family the next day. The adjective easy is incredibly accurate for this dessert. Talk about simple! This recipe was just what I was looking for – no fuss ingredients, takes very little time, and delicious, of course! Delicious is always a requirement.

This recipe is from the tried and true, always yummy blog, Our Best Bites (I’ve mentioned this one a few times before). The original recipe can be found here but I’ve written it below for you as well. Note: part of what makes this so easy is that it uses yellow cake mix. Although I do love making things from scratch, you also know that I love a shortcut from time to time (as evidenced by my beloved cake mix cookies here, here, and here!).

Ingredients:

-1 box yellow or white cake mix (I used an 18.25 oz. box of yellow)

-1 to 2 sticks of butter (see notes in instructions)

-1 can pumpkin (15 oz.)

-2 eggs

-1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz.)

-1 tsp. cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

-1/4 tsp. ginger

-1/8 tsp. cloves

-1/8 tsp. nutmeg

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/3 cup chopped pecans

-1/2 tsp. additional cinnamon for topping

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place 2 cups of the cake mix in a bowl. Cut in 3 Tbsp. of chilled butter. I used my fingers (as the original recipe suggests) to crumble the butter into small pieces. Place this cake mix and butter mixture in the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan (I greased mine even though the recipe didn’t specify) and press flat with your hands/fingers.

Mix the pumpkin, eggs, sweetened condensed milk, and spices until smooth. Pour on top of the cake mixture in the pan. Take the rest of the dry cake mix and mix in 1/2 tsp. cinnamon. Sprinkle it all over top of the pumpkin mixture. Before you put the remaining cake mix in the pan though, measure it so you know how much you have, and here’s why: for every cup of cake mix, you’ll need about 3 Tbsp. of melted butter. Since cake mixes vary in size (they’re not all 18.25 oz.!), you may have a different amount of cake mix left than the next person after you use the first 2 cups of it for the bottom layer.

After sprinkling the cake mix and cinnamon mixture on top of the pumpkin layer, sprinkle the pecans evenly over top. Then, depending on how much cake mix you sprinkled on, melt the appropriate amount of butter and then drizzle the butter evenly over top of everything. That’s it!

SPICES. 🙂 I used more than what the recipe listed.

Bake for about 40 minutes or so, or until a toothpick or knife comes out clean. Serve it warm, chilled, or room temp – whatever you prefer! I served it room temp on Thanksgiving. I also served it with cool whip, but you could definitely make your own whipped topping or serve it with classic vanilla ice cream or any other yummy ice cream flavor. Options options!!

Now, I have to confess that I somehow forgot to add the salt. Whoops! But, as far as the various ingredients go, that was a good one to forget since the lack of salt wouldn’t affect the taste as much as say, a lack of pumpkin would. 😉 Also, I didn’t have pumpkin pie spice so I just added a little extra of everything (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg).

Super simple and super tasty. It was a nice change from the more traditional pumpkin pie (even though I love that too!!).

I made this the day before Thanksgiving which worked out well since I didn’t take up any space in the kitchen or need to use any dishes on Thanksgiving day. I stayed out of my mom’s way as she was cooking. 🙂

Easy as pie! 😉

Read Full Post »

Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

I have a new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. This one! I’ve been meaning to try this particular recipe for a while now, and I am thankful I finally did. These cookies turned out to be just what I look for in a cookie…soft and chewy yet just very slightly crispy on the outer edge (very slightly). And they were super easy to make too! That’s always a bonus.

This recipe is from a fun cookbook my sister gave me a while ago – Gourmet Meals in Crappy Little Kitchens.

Now I wouldn’t say that I have a crappy kitchen, nor do I have a little one, but the recipes in this book are right up my alley. They’re generally on the easy side, yet they’re delicious and unique. A few examples of other recipes include crabtastic avocado cakes, grilled cheese sandwich soup, daylight come and me want pork stew, the mean green frittata, butternutty squash bread pudding, fig and lavender honey yogurt pie, and mexican chocolate soup. Interesting, right? Many of the names of her recipes are hilarious actually (there are probably at least 100 recipes in the book). This cookie recipe is probably one of the more traditional recipes in the book. Some recipes do require ingredients that the average, everyday cook like me might not have on hand on a daily basis. But none of them really require totally off-the-wall ingredients that are hard to find either. There. That was my short and simple review of this cookbook! Now I’ll finally get to the point – the cookie recipe!!

Ingredients:

-6 oz. unsalted butter, melted

-1 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup sugar

-1 whole egg plus one yolk

-2 tsp. vanilla extract

-2 cups plus 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (or flavor of your choice)

-1 cup pecan pieces (toasted, if desired)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Melt the butter in the microwave but allow it to cool down a bit to keep it from melting the chocolate prematurely. Using your whisk, combine the butter and sugars together in a large bowl. Whisk in the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this flour mixture to the butter and egg mixture and fold until just combined. Fold in the chocolate and pecan pieces. Be careful not to overmix.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Drop cookie dough by the spoonful (whatever size you desire; the cookbook said use a 1/4 cup measure, but mine were tablespoon-sized) on cookie sheet, placing at least 2 inches apart. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes. When the edges are just lightly golden brown, remove from oven. Allow the cookies to cool on the sheet for a couple minutes before removing to cooling rack. Once fully cooled, the cookies can be stored in an airtight container.

A couple other points to note… I actually used milk chocolate chips, not bittersweet, simply because that’s what I had on hand when I made this recipe (and I didn’t plan ahead and buy bittersweet ahead of time; I made these cookies kind of last minute…). Also, initially, the cookie dough was a tad dry, in my opinion. The recipe calls for 1 egg and 1 yolk. I was wondering if it might be okay to add 2 whole eggs? Perhaps that would make the dough less dry. What I ended up doing was adding a couple tablespoons of milk to the dough before forming it into balls to put on the cookie sheets. Perhaps you’ll have better luck with the recipe as is if you try it. If you have a similar experience to me though, maybe try adding two full eggs or a teeny bit of milk like I did. It worked like a charm! The cookies likely would have turned out just as well if I hadn’t added the milk, but it seemed necessary to me at the time.

As I look at these pictures, I’m thinking that I might need to make another batch of these cookies ASAP! My mouth is starting to water…

🙂

Talk to ya again soon!

Read Full Post »

Hummingbird Cake

I made this Hummingbird Cake for my mom and grandmother’s joint birthday celebration this year (their b’days are on the 13th and 19th of January). I would definitely describe this as a “special occasion” cake! It’s not particularly fancy per se, but it feels a bit more special, I think, because of the double layers, the filling, the frosting, the fun topping, the great flavors….well, it’s special because of everything I guess! 🙂 Not to boast, but the cake did get rave reviews from the whole family. I would make this again without any hesitation! It was quite flavorful and also very moist. It is a little bit on the rich side, likely because of the cream cheese frosting, so serving smaller slices is key.

This is another recipe from the Cake Mix Doctor cookbook that I’ve mentioned previously in my blog. I’m going to be lazy and provide a link to the recipe here, rather than type it out from the actual cookbook. Hope you don’t mind! I checked, and it’s exactly the same as in the book. And this is the recipe for the cream cheese frosting. Here are some pics of the process (I know, the one of the batter before it’s mixed doesn’t look all that appealing)…

Now, I did vary just a tad from the original recipe… I almost never follow a recipe exactly as it is! Maybe that should be a motto of Barbershop baking…something about improvising. Hmmmm. I’ll have to work on that one. Anyway, the recipe calls for spreading some of the cream cheese frosting in between the two cake layers. Instead of doing that, I was inspired by Kraft Foods to spread pudding between the two layers, as is done in this cake from the Kraft Foods Kitchen. I used one box of Jell-O banana cream pudding, mixed with about 3/4 cup of skim milk. I also mixed about 1/3 cup of drained crushed pineapple with the pudding. Mmmmm mmmm good! I thought that would be a nice touch to tie in the banana and pineapple fruits that went into the actual cake.

You’ll see here that I have the cake in the fridge before it was frosted! It’s easier to frost a cake that’s cold, so popping it in the fridge for a bit actually helps! Thanks to my sister for taking the picture of me frosting the cake… I don’t usually have someone else around to take a pic of me at work!

All in all, the Hummingbird Cake was definitely a hit! Try it for your next special occasion! Oh, and I should mention that no hummingbirds were harmed in the making of this cake. 😉 Also, I was curious about the origin of the cake’s name, and I found this explanation online in several places. Neat!

Read Full Post »