Favorite Recipes of 2012

2012YearEnd

I am done cooking for the year! Sad and nice at the same time. We’ll be traveling to visit more family for the rest of the year and heading out for New Year’s Eve. So after making pizza this evening, I am not expected to cook ANYTHING until New Year’s Day. And yes, that even includes preparing a bowl of oatmeal.

While I love cooking, it is fun to get a break. This year I’ve cooked a lot and tried to blog about most experiments and even some failures. I had a lot of extra time during the summer, and as a result my pantry is overflowing. Who knows what I’ll achieve next year. I have started thinking about a sort of “bucket list” as to what food goals I’d like to achieve in 2013, but until then, let’s have one last 2012 recipe hurrah with you, the readers’ favorite recipes of the year and a few additions of my own.

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Mint Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Mint Cookies – Photo from SheKnows.com

Hmm…so my my dessert posts always seem to get the most hits. We’ll here you are sugar loving fans!

So last week in my Tribeca CSA share, I got more fresh mint. Now, I don’t really have anything against mint, but other than Mojitos, I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. I’m not a huge savory mint fan, so I wanted something sweet. Mint and chocolate go together, right? So I did some googling. I started finding cookie recipes but all used extract. I wanted FRESH mint. I liked the idea of a mint chocolate chip cookie, but wasn’t really sure how to go about it. Do I steep the mint and make a simple syrup? Chopped mint in a cookie might add a strange texture. But then I found it–mint sugar!

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