My Favourite 12 Recipes of 2012

The end of 2012 is almost here and I thought that was a great opportunity to take a look back at the year and collect my favourites recipes. With this being 2012 I figured that it would be appropriate to choose my favourite 12 recipes rather than the normal 10 recipes and that works out perfectly at one for each month. It is interesting to note that some of the recipes that were my favourites are also on the most popular list and and some are different. Of course grilled cheese sandwiches make a good showing along with the greatest discovery of the year, the bacon jam!

A hope that everyone has a Happy New Year!

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25 Most Pinned Recipes in 2012

In 2012 I discovered and became totally addicted to pinterest.com and with the end of the year here I thought that it might be interesting to see which Closet Cooking recipes were the most popular on pinterest.com. Here are the 25 most popular Closet Cooking recipes on pinterest.com! Most of them you will be familiar with but there were a few surprises in the list that keeps things interesting!

If you are not already following Closet Cooking on pinterest.com you can follow here.

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Bacon Jam Breakfast Sandwich with Fried Egg and Avocado

For those readers that got some bacon jam as a gift or for those that made their own, these bacon jam breakfast sandwiches are a great way to enjoy some of it on a lazy holiday morning. (If you don't have any bacon jam, you seriously need to try making some! It is super easy to make and so addictively good!) This breakfast sandwich combines the sweet, salty, smoky and spicy bacon jam with cool and creamy avocado on toast topped with a fried or poached egg with a perfectly runny yolk! You have to love a good messy sandwich and this is just one of those, best eaten with a knife and fork and so worth the mess!

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Peppermint Candy Cane Popcorn

I have really been into homemade popcorn lately, making it both for snacking and for gift giving and up next is a festive peppermint candy cane popcorn that is perfect for the holiday season! Specialty popcorns like caramel popcorn cost and arm and a leg compared to what you get and it turns out that they can be supper easy to make them at home. This peppermint candy cane popcorn is as easy to make as microwaving some popcorn kernels in a paper bag, mixing them with some melted white chocolate and crushed peppermint candy canes before letting it set and enjoying it. The creamy white chocolate goes surprisingly well on popcorn and the peppermint candy cane adds a nice contrast in texture along with the pepperminty goodness. If you have the time to get one more homemade gift in for the holidays this is a great last minute option!

Happy holidays!

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Homemade Microwave Popcorn

To make the cookies and cream popcorn I needed some popcorn which left me with a conundrum since I really don't like most store bought microwave popcorn or making popcorn on the stove top. It never really occurred to me that I could make my own microwave popcorn at home so I was ready to make the popcorn on the stovetop when on a whim I did a search on the internet for homemade microwave popcorn and found that not only was it possible but that it was quite easy. As it turns out, all you need to do is place some popcorn kernels in a paper bag and microwave them for a few minutes! I really liked the idea since bulk popcorn kernels are dead cheap and it does not require any oil or any of the chemicals in store bought microwave popcorn and of course it is dead easy to make! You can eat it as is or season it with salt and butter or with any other seasoning that you want. You can even use it to make gourmet popcorn like caramel popcorn or cookies and cream popcorn.

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Cookies and Cream Popcorn

I have been seeing some pretty amazing looking homemade gourmet popcorn going around the food blogging sphere for a while now and I have always wanted to try my hands at making some! With the holiday season here I was thinking that specialty popcorn would make for some spectacular gifts, I mean who wouldn't be happy to receive a bag of this as a gift! On the top of my list of popcorns to try was a cookies and cream popcorn that I came across on Chef in Training a while ago. This popcorn basically takes the idea of cookies and cream and turns it into popcorn by attaching crumbled bits of oreo cookies to the popcorn with melted creamy white chocolate. The next best thing about this popcorn is how easy it is to make! You just need to mix the popped popcorn with the crumbled cookies along with the melted white chocolate and then wait for the chocolate to set again. You could be enjoying a bowl of this wonderful popcorn in less than a half an hour with less than 10 minutes of effort!

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Chocolate and Maraschino Cherry Shortbread Cookies

Shortbread has to be one of my favourite holiday cookies, I mean it is so easy to make and that melt in your mouth buttery goodness is almost impossible to resist! Although plain shortbread is amazing you can fill it with pretty much anything from simple to gourmet and from sweet to savoury even. Taking a queue from my candied orange peel shortbread I had been wanting to try a festive version with bright red maraschino cherries, though instead of coating them with chocolate this time I was going to add the chocolate to the cookies along with the cherries. I was however a little torn between whether to use white or dark chocolate as white chocolate seemed more festive but dark chocolate goes so well with cherries. In the end the easiest solution was to make a batch of both and besides you can't have too much shortbread.

The chocolate and maraschino cherry shortbread cookies did not disappoint! I was quite pleased at how the red from the cherries swirled into the cookie dough and both the white and dark chocolate versions turned out amazingly well!

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Peppermint White Chocolate Chip Cookies

In addition to baking my favourite holiday cookies every year I like to try some new ones and top on my list for this year was some peppermint white chocolate chip cookies. White chocolate chunk and macadamia nut cookies have to be one of my all time favourite cookies and I was thinking that it would be great to take a festive spin on them and use peppermint instead of the macadamia nuts. For the recipe I went with my usual white chocolate chunk and macadamia nut cookie recipe and replaced the macadamia nuts with crush peppermint candy canes or in this case peppermint candies. These chocolate chip cookies turn out nice and crisp on the edges but oh so soft and melt in your mouth on the inside! The crushed peppermint candy added and amazing peppermint flavour along with a rather pleasant crunch. I will definitely be adding these peppermint white chocolate chip cookies to my regular holiday rotation! You will have to excuse me while I go a place another batch into the oven.

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Chorizo Queso Fundido

With all of the cookies and other sweets during the holidays it is always nice to change things up a bit and go with something savoury! You can never go wrong with a hot cheese dip whether you are throwing a party or just wtching the game and I knew exactly which hot cheese dip that I wanted to try at my next party. I came across this chorizo queso fundido on Smells Like Home a while ago and I have been wanting to make it ever since. I mean just look at the ingredients, with all of that melted cheese, spicy chorizo and even a hit of tequila it was bound to be awesaomely addictive! I did make one important change to the recipe be using fresh Mexican style chorizo rather than cured Spanish style chorizo as I have really been into it lately and I knew that it would work well in the dip. This chorizo queso fundido is definitely a keeper and it will dissapper faster than you can blink so eat your share while still in the kitchen or better yet hide out in a locked room; you didn't really want hear any more about aunt Thema's warts anyways.

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Chicken Piccata

After having recently made the chicken marsala, it reminded me of another Italian chicken and pan sauce dish, chicken piccata and I could not resist updating the photos for the recipe. Piccata is an Italian method of preparing meat where the meat is cut thinly, breaded and then fried in oil or butter before a pan sauce is made with the drippings, white wine, lemon juice, capers and butter. Next to the amazing flavour of the pan sauce, my favourite thing about this dish is how quick and easy it is to make; all you need to do is cook the meat, add the ingredients for the pan sauce and reduce it. Not only is this dish easy enough to make on a weeknight but it will also not fail to impress any dinner guest!

Note: Normally the chicken is coated in flour before frying but I prefer to omit this step.

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Bacon Jam Chicken Club Sandwich with Avocado and Chipotle Mayo

With the holidays quickly approaching I figured that it was about time to start making some gifts and of course the first thing on my list was a couple of batches of bacon jam! I mean you really cannot go wrong giving this super tasty, sweet, salty, smoky and spicy bacon jam as a gift this year! In addition to making the bacon jam as gifts for others I could not resist making some for myself and the first thing that I used it in was a chicken club sandwich with a grilled chicken breast, lettuce, tomato and even more bacon along with some spicy chipotle mayo and some cool and creamy avocado. The bacon jam works amazingly well in a chicken club sandwich and this has to be one of the tastiest sandwiches that I have had in a while!

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Pumpkin Pie Quinoa Parfait with Gingersnap Pecan Streusel

I had some leftover pumpkin puree that I wanted to use and after the apple crumble quinoa parfaits earlier in the week, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it; pumpkin pie quinoa parfaits! The idea was simple, mix some pumpkin pie spices and brown sugar into the pumpkin puree and layer it with Greek vanilla yogurt and quinoa spiced with cinnamon. At this point everything sounds nice and healthy but I could not resist topping it off with a gingersnap pecan streusel since gingersnaps and pecans go so well with pumpkin pie! Now i am looking forward to quick, tasty and fairly healthy desserts for breakfast from the leftovers for the next few days!

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Green Bean, Mushroom and Caramelized Onion Tart

Simple sauteed green beans, mushrooms and onions has to be one of my favourite side dishes but it is always nice to change things up and to use that fabulous combo in other dishes! I recently came across the idea of using the combo in a green bean and mushroom tart on A Spicy Persective and of course I just had to try it. I have been enjoying the ease and simplicity of puff pastry tarts for a while now and you really cannot get much easier that rolling out some puff pastry, topping it with your favourite toppings and baking it for a few minutes in the oven! For this particular tart we are topping it with blanched green beans and caramelized mushrooms and onions. Of course it is always nice to have something on your tart to hep the other ingredients stick to it as you eat and some blue cheese works wonderfully well with green beans and mushrooms on this tart!

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Pizza Quesadillas (aka Pizzadillas)

I was immediately captivated by the idea of topping a quesadilla like a pizza when I first came across it a while ago! I mean you really cannot go wrong combining two great things like quesadillas and pizza! Ever since I made the taco quesadilla pizzas I have been wanting to try making pizza pizza quisadillas and I could not hold off on making them any longer! The basic idea is that you make a pizza quesadilla, stuffed with your favourite pizza ingredients including pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni and black olives, and then you top the quesadilla with more of the pizza toppings and quickly bake it to melt the cheese on top!

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Butternut Squash, Mushroom, Kale and Sausage Frittata

I have had the idea of using the flavour combo of butternut squash, mushrooms, kale and possibly Italian turkey sausage in a recipe for a couple of weeks but I could never really decide what to use them in and I never really had the time to think about it. Now that things have calmed down a bit I finally got to thinking about it and although my initial idea to use them in a quinoa salad sounded good I was looking for something a little different and a frittata sounded perfect! A frittata is an egg dish similar to a quiche except that it does not have a crust and it is cooked on the stove top until the eggs have set on the bottom before being transferred to the oven to finish baking. Frittatas can be filled with pretty much anything and I was thinking that the butternut squash, mushrooms, kale and sausage combo would be a great one! Even though this frittata takes a bit of time time make everything is pretty straight forward and easy and the final result is well worth the effort!

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Apple Crumble Quinoa Parfait

I have been a fan of quinoa ever since I discovered it and I am always looking for new ways to enjoy it. I recently came across the idea of using it in an apple and quinoa parfait with a crumble topping on Epicureean Mom that sounded so good that I had to try it! I have used quinoa in parfaits before so I knew that it worked well in them and that this apple crumble one would be a winner! This parfait layers vanilla yogurt with cinnamon spiced quinoa and a simple apple compote and it is topped with a rolled oat crumble! Not only is this parfait easy to make but it is also pretty healthy and makes for a great breakfast! If you have any leftovers, simply throw the components into separate containers and refrigerate them all except the crumble topping and the next day you can use them to throw another parfait together in a few minutes.

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Apple Crisp Pizza with Caramel Sauce

I am a huge fan of apple desserts and I always enjoy fall and early winter with their huge selection of apples to use in them. Some of my favourite apple treats include apple crisps and apple pies so when I came across a recipe that combined the two an served them up in pizza form as an apple crisp pizza on The Girl Who Ate Everything I knew that I would have to try it! The basic idea is that a pie crust is rolled out like a pizza dough and topped with a layer apples coated in cinnamon and then topped in a layer of rolled oat crumble. Not only is this recipe amazing but it is dead simple to make once you have your pie crust! Really the hardest part is peeling and dicing the apples! If all of this was not enough, the finished product is smothered in caramel sauce and the apple and caramel flavour combination is simply divine! You will have to excuse me while I go and warm up a another slice!

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Slow Cooker Pumpkin Pie Steel Cut Oatmeal

With the cooler weather here I have been getting back into warming bowls of oatmeal for breakfasts and one of my favourites at this time of year has to be pumpkin pie oatmeal with pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices. I often prefer to go with steel cut oats rather than rolled oats as the have a chewier texture and nuttier flavour. The only problem is that it takes a bit longer to cook and who wants to be cooking early in the morning while rushing to get to work? Up until recently I was using my rice cooker with a timer to cook the steel cut oats overnight but it recently died so I thought that I would try using my slow cooker instead. After a bit of experimentation I found that it is actually pretty easy to cook steel cut oats in your slow cooker overnight, you just need a slow cooker with a timer. It takes about 4 hours on low to cook in the slow cooker without burning on the bottom so you need one that has a timer based start or one that can be programmed to cook for 4 hours and then switch to keep warm mode and it works like a charm. Of course I sweetened the pumpkin pie steel cut oats with caramel sauce rather than sugar and the flavour combo is simply amazing!

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Chicken Marsala

It seems that I have really been into chicken these last few weeks and when I made the pan seared chicken breasts in a mushroom, tarragon and mustard pan sauce the other day it reminded me of another chicken and mushroom dish that I had not made in a long time, chicken marsala. Chicken marsala is a quick and tasty dish where the chicken is sauteed in a pan and then the Marsala, an Italian fortified wine, is used along with mushrooms to make a pan sauce to go with the chicken. Pan sauces are so easy to make and always full of flavour and this one is no different coming together in no time at all!

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Garlic Mashed Cauliflower

For my pan seared chicken breasts in a mushroom, tarragon and mustard pan sauce dinner I want to serve it on top of something that could soak up all of that amazingly tasty sauce! One of the first things that normally comes to mind at times like this is mashed potatoes but I have really been into cauliflower lately and I have been wanting to try mashed cauliflower for a while! The mashed cauliflower is pretty much the same as mashed potatoes except that it is made with cauliflower instead of ptoatoes. You pretty much just steam the cauliflower until tender, mash it and mix in seasonings and flavours of choice. Since the sauce was the star of the show for my dinner, I wanted some pretty basic mashed cauliflower with little or no flavour to overpower the sauce so I went with a basic garlic mashed cauliflower with butter, sour cream, salt and pepper and a touch of miso paste for umami. Really you could mix in whatever flavours you wanted and you could easily do any mashed potato recipe with mashed cauliflower. I am already thinking about an aged white cheddar mashed cauliflower for next time!

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Pan Seared Chicken Breasts in a Mushroom, Tarragon and Mustard Pan Sauce

With grilling season over we are now forced to cook indoors but that does not really bother me so much as I have always enjoyed cooking meat in a pan over the stove where you can get a good sear and some caramelization. Of course when you caramelize meat in a pan you get those brown bits of flavour stuck to the bottom of the pan and they are just begging to be scraped off with a nice deglazing to reclaim all of the flavour. It is with this that I made these super tasty pan seared chicken breasts in a mushroom, tarragon and mustard pan sauce which is really easy to make and quick enough to do on a weeknight. The tangy mustard and anise-y tarragon are an amazing flavour combination in this creamy pan sauce and you really cannot go wrong throwing some mushrooms in to fill out the sauce!

What are your favourite pan sauce recipes?

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Crispy Baked Onion Rings

With all of the experimenting that I have been doing with crispy baked vegetable fries lately, such as the eggplant parmesan fries and the portobello mushroom fries, I cannot believe that I did not think of using one of the most obvious vegetables, onions! I mean onion rings are so addictively good and they are the one upgrade that I pretty much always take if it is available when ordering out. My initial thought was to take the same recipe that I had been using for the other vegetables, where I dredge them in flour, dip them in egg and then coat them in panko bread crumbs, and although it worked and they tasted great, it was not all that easy to coat both the insides and outsides of the onion rings with just two eggs! I am all about easy recipes and the first recipe was just not easy enough so I put my thinking cap on and eventually I found myself thinking about fish and chips where the fish is dipped not in egg but in a batter and I had my solution! Using the batter it was super easy to coat the onions rings, the bread crumbs stayed on and the baked onions rings tasted fantastic! Now I can enjoy onion rings whenever I want at home!

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Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Popper Stuffed Chicken

The other day when I made the slow cooker bacon wrapped apple BBQ chicken it reminded me of another bacon wrapped chicken dish that I wanted to make, bacon wrapped jalapeno popper stuffed chicken. The basic idea was to stuff the chicken with all of the flavours of jalapeno poppers and then to wrap them in bacon and grill or bake them. Jalapeno poppers are commonly filled with cream cheese and or cheddar cheese and they are either coated in bread crumbs and fried until crispy or wrapped in bacon and grilled or baked until cooked. Although I liked the sound of a crispy coating on the chicken the bacon wrapping was calling my name and I could not resist going with that option! For the filling I went with a simple mixture of cream cheese, cheddar and diced jalapeno peppers. The bacon wrapped jalapeno popper stuffed chicken tastes just like jalapeno poppers and makes for one really tasty light meal!

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Prosciutto Wrapped Gorgonzola Stuffed Figs

The other day I came across some nice looking figs at the market and they immediately reminded me of a pin that I had recently made on pinterest for figs with gorgonzola and speck and I could not resist picking some up so that I could try the recipe! Sweet figs and tangy gorgonzola are a fabulous flavour combination that I have used many times and I was immediately taken with the idea of wrapping them in a salty cured ham! Not only do we have the fig, gorgonzola, and prosciutto flavour combination going but they are baked until the cheese starts to melt and the prosciutto gets nice and crispy on the edges making it even better! What an perfect appetizer for any occasion!

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Cheesy Broccoli Quinoa

One of my favourite side dishes has to be cheesy broccoli rice which is a quick and easy dish where with the amazing broccoli and cheddar cheese flavour combo! Ever since I discovered quinoa I have been trying my favourite rice dishes with the rice replaced with the healthier quinoa and it was finally time to try a cheesy broccoli quinoa! This dish is super easy to make and you pretty much just cook the quinoa with the broccoli and then mix in the cheese once the quinoa and broccoli are cooked. Some of the things that I like about this recipe are that it is a one pot dish and that it is a stove top dish which is great for holiday dinners where there never seems to be enough oven space or time. I think I now have a new favourite side dish!

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Slow Cooker Bacon Wrapped Apple BBQ Chicken

I have had a slow cooker for a few years now but I find that I hardly ever use it and when I do it is usually for things like pulled pork. I almost feel like I need to justify it taking up space when I have so little so I am always on the lookout for good slow cooker recipes to give it a workout. I recently came across a this tasty looking recipe for slow cooker bacon wrapped apple BBQ chicken on Chef in Training and with apples in season it seemed like the perfect chance to pull my slow cooker out! I mean you really cannot go wrong with BBQ chicken and if you then throw apples and bacon into the mix things can only get better! One thing that I do like about slow cooker recipes is that they are generally really easy, sometimes being as simple as throwing all of the ingredients into the slow cooker and turning it on and then you come home to a fully cooked one pot meal. This recipe is only requires you to dice some apples and wrap the chicken in bacon so it is easily doable even on a busy weekday morning and it is so worth the ten minutes of effort! The chicken comes out nice and moist and tender and the flavours of the bacon have melted into the chicken and BBQ creating one really tasty dish!

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Pumpkin Pie Pancakes (with Caramel Sauce)

I had a bunch of pumpkin puree leftover that needed to be used and I figured that it was the perfect opportunity to make one of my favourite pumpkin dishes, pumpkin pie pancakes, and to update the photos for the recipe! Pumpkin pie pancakes are one of my favourites because they are so nice and light, fluffy, moist and tender and not only do they taste just like pumpkin pie but they are so quick and easy to make! I mean really, it is as simple as mixing the dry ingredients, mixing the wet ingredients, mixing them together and the cooking the pancakes! In the past I would normally have served these pumpkin pie pancakes smothered in maple syrup but more recently I have been liking the pumpkin and caramel flavour combo and since homemade caramel sauce is so easy to make that is the way that I went this time. One of the nice things about caramel sauce is that when it is cool it is nice and thick but if you warm it up a bit it becomes much more fluid, like a syrup, which is perfect for pancakes!

Oh, my! Pumpkin pie pancakes smothered in caramel sauce; it's just like having dessert for breakfast!

If you want to be a bit more decadent you could use a vanilla bourbon caramel sauce!

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Vanilla Bourbon Caramel Sauce

I almost forgot to share the vanilla bourbon caramel sauce recipe that I mentioned in the pumpkin Greek yogurt banana bread the other day! This vanilla bourbon caramel sauce is a pretty standard caramel sauce with the seeds from a vanilla bean and a splash of bourbon added to add a depth of flavour and to give it an even more amazing aroma. Caramel sauce can be a bit tricky to make at first but once you get the hang of it, it is really easy! In fact the hardest thing about it is that it requires you to watch it the whole time because if you take yours eyes of of it for a few seconds it can burn really quickly. So other than having to dedicate 20-30 minutes of time to making it, it as simple as melting some sugar, bringing it to a boil and cooking it until it turns a nice amber colour. All that remains is to carefully add the cream followed by the butter and any flavourings that you want, in this case the vanilla and the bourbon.

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Rolo Cheesecake Bars

I have a friend that is completely addicted to everything Rolo and you really can't blame him with all of that chocolatly and caramelly goodness. One example on this addiction is the fact that if you were to look in his freezer at any given time you would find about a half a dozen containers of Rolo ice cream. When I came across these Rolo cheesecke bars on Bakers Royale a while ago I thought of my friend and pinned the recipe to make the next time we met up. I recently got the chance to make the Rolo cheesecake bars for my friend and they were a huge success with him and everyone else that tried them! These Rolo cheesecake bars are decadently good with a graham cracker crumb crust and a cheesecake layer sweetened in part with caramel sauce that is stuffed with mini Rolos and finally topped with a chocolate layer that has a caramel wave pattern. The only problem that I have now is that every time I meetup with my friend, he asks me where his Rolo cheesecake bars are.

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Pumpkin Greek Yogurt Banana Bread

With Halloween coming up I have been thinking about pumpkins a lot more and when I was wondering what to do for breakfasts this week, a pumpkin bread seemed like a great way to go! Although I already have a recipe for a pumpkin bread that I really like I wanted to try to incorporate some of the ideas from the recently successful strawberry Greek yogurt banana bread into it. The Greek yogurt banana bread uses bananas and Greek yogurt to completely replace the oil or butter in an attempt to make it a little healthier while leaving the bread nice and light, fluffy and most importantly, moist. For my pumpkin Greek yogurt banana bread I pretty much took the Greek yogurt banana bread recipe and added pumpkin spices and pumpkin puree while removing some of the bananas to keep the moisture level consistent. In addition I replaced some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour and since pecan go so well with pumpkin I added some of those as well. The pumpkin Greek yogurt banana bread turned out amazingly well, having one of the best textures that I have ever had in a quick bread! I am looking forward to breakfasts this week especially on Halloween!

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Fried Green Tomato BLT with Pimento Cheese

Sorry about the lack of updates this past week; I had some computer problems which are hopefully resolved now!

You can still get green tomatoes at the grocery store and I have been taking full advantage of that by enjoying plenty of fried green tomatoes including more than a few fried green tomato BLTs! Once the field ripened tomatoes disappear in the late fall the green tomatoes show up and once fried until tender, these tart and tangy green tomatoes make an excellent substitute for red in BLTs! Of course, I like to play around with my fried green tomato BLTs just like I do with regular BLTs and this time I was thinking about a new version with pimento cheese. Normally adding cheese to a BLT might not be the first thing that would come to mind but the addictively good, sweet, spicy and creamy pimento cheese finds a perfect home in one!

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Roast Turkey Club Sandwich with Cranberry Sauce

One of my favourite parts about the Thanksgiving dinner has to be enjoying the leftovers for the rest of the week and in particular the turkey leftovers. Inevitably the first thing that I do with the leftover breast meat is make roast turkey club sandwiches and they always includes a healthy dose of homemade cranberry sauce! There is just something magical about the combo of turkey, cranberry sauce, mayonnaise, crisp lettuce and juicy tomatoes and I am hopelessly addicted to it! Over the last week I have enjoyed a number of these sandwiches and for a few of them I decided to play around a bit by making them more like turkey club sandwiches by adding bacon.

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Tequila and Lime Jalapeno Cranberry Sauce

No holiday turkey dinner is complete without some homemade cranberry sauce and since it is so easy to make at home you really have no excuse not to! Although a basic cranberry sauce is amazing all by itself, you can change things up every once in a while by adding various flavoura and this time I went with a Mexican inspired flavour theme with spicy jalapeno peppers, lime and a hit of tequila. The heat provided by the jalapeno peppers goes well in the sweet and tart cranberry sauce making it little like a salsa and the lime juice really brightens it up!

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Beer Mac n Cheese Soup

With the weather getting cooler soups have been on my mind more often and with it being October I have been thinking about recipes that use beer for an Oktoberfest inspired menu. With that in mind it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a beer mac n cheese soup! I had been planning on making a mac n cheese inspired soup for a while but when I last made the ale and cheddar soup I figured that a beer mac n cheese soup would be even better! This recipe is actually pretty similar to the ale and cheddar soup recipe with the primary difference being the addition of elbow macaroni and some extra cheese so that it tastes like a really creamy bowl of mac n cheese! I completed my mac n cheese soup meal off with some soft and chewy pretzel rolls, complimenting the Oktoberfest theme.

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Triple Chocolate Pumpkin Pie

The final component of my Thanksgiving dinner was perhaps the most important part, the dessert, and this year I wanted to try something a little new, a chocolate pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is often the dessert of choice for Thanksgiving and since chocolate and pumpkin go so well together I was thinking that a chocolate pumpkin pie would be amazing! At first I was just planning on simply mixing chocolate into a regular pumpkin pie recipe but a quick search on the web led me to this triple chocolate pumpkin pie recipe and with three kinds of chocolate I was thinking that it would have to be at least three times as good!

This pumpkin pie uses a pretty basic graham cracker crumb crust with some pumpkin spices mixed in, though you could easily add some cocoa powder to the crust to get a fourth form of chocolate into the mix. The first chocolate comes in the form of a layer of bittersweet chocolate on the crust that is topped with the semisweet chocolate pumpkin pie and the final chocolate comes in the form of a milk chocolate drizzle that is added just before serving. This triple chocolate pumpkin pie is pure chocolaty decadence at its best!

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Twice Baked Sweet Potato Potato Skins with Pecan Streusel (aka Individual Sweet Potato Casserole)

One idea that I had for a new appetizer for Thanksgiving was to make some kind of savoury sweet potato potato skins and the only question that I had was what to fill them with? Every time I thought about sweet potatoes though, I kept thinking about sweet potato casserole so I decided to just go with it and I made some sweet potato casserole potato skins! A sweet potato casserole is a casserole made with sweet potatoes and it is commonly topped with pecans and sometimes marshmallows and even though it is sweet enough to be a dessert it is served as a side dish. The basic idea behind these sweet potato potato skins was to bake the sweet potatoes until tender, scoop out the flesh, mash it and mix it up with common sweet potato casserole ingredients, stuffing the mixture back into the skins before topping with a pecan streusel and baking a second time! For the filling, I went with some of my favourite sweet potato casserole flavours including brown sugar, maple syrup and a splash of bourbon. Really you could consider each sweet potato potato skin to be and individually sized serving of sweet potato casserole!

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Roasted Cauliflower and Aged White Cheddar Gratin

The roasted cauliflower and aged white cheddar soup has been on my mind a lot lately and when it came time to think about side dishes for my Thanksgiving dinner one of the first ideas that came to mind was to convert the soup into a side dish. It seemed only natural that the side dish would take the form of a gratin and a roasted cauliflower and aged white cheddar gratin was sounding really good! Although steamed cauliflower would work in a gratin, I wanted the extra flavour that roasting adds even if it meant more oven time! I kept the gratin really simple with a base of an easy bechamel sauce that the aged white cheddar is melted into before being poured over the roasted cauliflower. Once the cauliflower has been roasted the aged white cheddar bechamel sauce has been made, all that need to be done it to mix them, top them with panko bread crumbs and then bake them until golden brown.

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Pumpkin Cinnamon Roll Pancakes with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

This weekend is the Canadian Thanksgiving and that means that it is time to make something special for breakfast and I knew just what I wanted to make. I have been wanting to try the cinnamon swirl pancakes from Recipe Girl ever since I saw them and Thanksgiving seemed like the perfect time to try the pumpkin pie version! I mean you really cannot go wrong combining two amazing things like pancakes and cinnamon rolls and throw in a third, pumpkin pie, and you have something that is sure to have every one coming back for seconds or even thirds! (The recipe easily doubles or triples!)

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Pad Thai Omelette

I am particularly fond of Pad Thai, a Thai fried noodle dish, so when I came across the idea of a pad Thai omelette I was intrigued and had to try it. Pad Thai generally consists of rice noodles, egg, fish sauce, tamarind, palm sugar, chilies, bean sprouts and chicken and/or shrimp and it is garnished with peanuts, cilantro and lime juice. The combination of flavours and textures is quite amazing especially the artful blend of salty, sour, sweet and spicy! I normally consider omelettes for breakfast and the first thing that came to mind when I discovered the pad Thai omelette was that I hardly needed an excuse to eat pad Thai for breakfast!

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Bacon and Fried Green Tomato Pimento Grilled Cheese

Another fall treat is green tomatoes which make a brief appearance at the farmers market when the weather threatens to destroy the tomatoes before they ripen. Ever since I first discovered them I eagerly await them each fall and this weekend they made their first appearance. Inevitably the first thing that I do with them is to make some fried green tomatoes which is a Southern dish where slices of green, unripe, tomatoes are coated in cornmeal and fried until crispy. After an initial batch of fried green tomatoes I wanted to combine them with another Southern delicacy, pimento cheese, a combination of cheddar cheese, pimentos and mayonnaise, and make, you guessed it, a fried green tomato and pimento cheese sandwich!

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25 Outstanding Pumpkin Recipes

For me, October is the month of pumpkins and I always enjoy trying new pumpkin recipes. In addition to tasting great pumpkins are very versatile working in both sweet and savoury dishes that can be mains, sides, desserts or even appetizers or breakfasts. Pumpkin is commonly used in two different forms either solid chucks or pureed. Although canned pumpkin puree is pretty convenient it is easy to make homemade pumpkin puree. One thing to keep in mind when buying pumpkins to eat, look for the ones labeled as pie pumpkins as they taste a lot better than the ones that are for carving up for Halloween. Without further ado, 25 of my favourite pumpkin recipes:

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Grilled Eggplant and Roasted Red Pepper Sandwich with Halloumi

Up next for my homemade roasted red peppers was to use them in a sandwich along with some grilled eggplant and halloumi. Halloumi is a Greek Cypriot cheese that fries well, retaining its shape rather than melting and gets 'squeaky' once fried. Simple fried halloumi with a splash of lemon juice is amazing all by itself but it also makes a great addition to a sandwich such as this one! I am still a little conflicted as to whether I should be diving into fall dishes or relishing the final days of summer and summer won out with this sandwich and I finished it off with field ripened beefsteak tomatoes and some fresh homemade basil pesto!

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Roasted Red Pepper and Goat Cheese Alfredo Pasta

Another thing that I really like about this time of year is all of the red peppers that are around. Not only are they plentiful but they are also cheap and every year at this time I head down to the farmers market and pick up a large basket full of them. By far my favourite thing to do with red peppers is to roast them and luckily roasted red peppers keep well in the freezer so I roast most of the basket and freeze them for use throughout the year. Since I was roasting up a bunch of red peppers anyways it seemed only natural to use some of them right away and I was thinking that a creamy roasted red pepper and goat cheese pasta was a great way to go!

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Recipe Box Feature

A while ago I added the Recipe Box feature, the My Recipe Box link in the menu at the top of Closet Cooking, that allows you to easily save recipes to your recipe box, create meal plans and automatically generate grocery lists. These features are provided by ZipList and they have an app so you can take your recipes, meal plan and grocery list with you on your phone when you go shopping!

For those of you that have been using these features, I would love to hear your opinions on it! Do you like it? What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? What would you like to see improved? etc.

For those of you that have not used these features, try adding a few of your favourite Closet Cooking recipes to your recipe box with the button, make a meal plan and create a grocery list. Once you have added the recipes to your box you can see them in the My Recipe Box menu item at the top of Closet Cooking.

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BELT (Bacon Egg Lettuce Tomato) Sandwich

I certainly have been enjoying a lot of BLTs these days with all of the beautiful local, field ripened beefsteak tomatoes around! It can sometimes be difficult to imagine improving on an already amazing sandwich like the BLT but adding an egg is a good place to start! There are a lot of ways to add an egg to a BLT but the first thought that comes to my mind is in the form of a quick and easy egg salad made with creamy mayo and a touch of a tangy mustard. I guess that once you add egg to the mix it is no longer a BLT but it becomes a BELT sandwich! Of course an even easier way to add an egg to a BLT is to simply add a fried egg and with that runny yolk it is very hard to resist!

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Chicken and Avocado Enchiladas in Creamy Avocado Sauce

Chicken and avocado enchilada recipes have been making their way around the food logging sphere lately like these spicy avocado chicken enchiladas on the novice chef, these chicken and avocado enchiladas on gimme some oven and these avocado cream and chicken suiza enchiladas on foodie crush and given my obsession with both Mexican cuisine and avocados it was only a matter of time until I made some of my own! For my recipe I wanted to get as much avocado into the dish as possible so I stuffed the enchiladas with big chunks of avocado in addition to using avocados in the creamy enchilada sauce. Another goal that I had with the recipe was for it to be really quick and easy to put together and if you have the salsa verde and cooked and shredded chicken on hand already then you can whip these super tasty enchiladas up in about 30 minutes!

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25 Fabulous Fall Recipes

Fall is here and with it, some cooler weather! When fall rolls around, menus start to change due to the cooling weather, different produce being available and to the fact that we are no longer as concerned with having the oven on. This means that things like roasts, soups, stews and other comfort dishes will be back on the menu! Lets also not forget about all of the great fall produce including apples, pears, pumpkins, squash, brussels sprouts and cranberries that are now available and just begging to be enjoyed! I thought that I would share with you a few of my favourite recipes for this time of year:

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