My Favorite Recipes from 2012
January – White Chocolate Frito Popcorn This stuff is seriously addictive. The combination of sweetness from the M&Ms and white chocolate and the salty crunchiness from the popcorn and fritos is indescribable. I took this to a Super Bowl Party and it was a huge success.
February – Roasted Garlic and Chicken Soup Hubby absolutely adores garlic. This soup has a rich garlicy flavor. I served this with freshly baked bread multiple times last winter.
March – Browned Butter Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies This has become my go-to chocolate chip cookies recipe. I’ve made it more times than I can count with a variety of mix-in options.
April – Purple Ombre Cake This is quite an impressive cake. But don’t let it intimidate you. You can break up the process and do a lot of it ahead of time. It’s perfect for any special occasion. And even if you don’t make this overly impressive cake, be sure to make the passion fruit curd that I used for filling. It’s divine.
May – Giant M&M Cookies I love M&M Cookies. These cookies are the size of your hand and perfectly gooey on the inside with a crisp outer edge.
June – Patriotic Quake Cake I really got in to cakes in 2012 apparently. This one was so fun to make and I can’t make it again for another holiday.
July – Roasted Cherry Brownie Cheesecake This recipe warmed me up to the idea of cherries. I’m really not a fan at all. But when you roast them, then pour them between and over a layer of brownie and a layer of cheesecake, how can you go wrong?
August – Peach, Bacon, Avocado Sandwich Peaches are my all-time favorite fruit. This sandwich was very unique and delicious.
September – Banana Coconut Bread A coworker of mine called this exquisite. Enough said.
October – Apple 7 Layer Magic Bars This twist on a classic recipe had a combination of amazing fall flavors – homemade applesauce, apples, coconut, white chocolate, and cinnamon.
November – Boston Cream Pie Cheesecake Cake This was the only cheesecake cake I made last year. That’s sad because I love them. It had all the flavors of the a Boston Cream Pie without the pastry cream.
December – Pecan Pie Brownies These brownies are the stuff of dreams. A fudgey brownie topped with a layer of pecan pie baked right on top. Amazing.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this! I have also been using Google Reader for some time and am very sad that it is shutting down. Thanks to your very helpful instructions I set-up my Feedly and was able to get all of my tags moved over. Thanks again!!
beantownbaker — June 17th, 2013 @ 7:29 am
So glad this was useful for you! I had such a hard time with the tags in Feedly. I was about ready to give up when I found the comment to fix it.
Oh my god- I am SO upset about this!!! I’ve been putting off moving to another reader and using GR til the BITTER END. Thankfully, I don’t really use the tags (I pin recipes instead), but I’ve got a bunch of posts starred that I should probably do something with.
beantownbaker — June 17th, 2013 @ 9:34 am
Like adrienne said below, Feedly will import your starred posts, so that’s good.
Ugh I KNOW! I went to Feedly early and I’ve started to feel pretty settled in it but it’s certainly no google reader.
beantownbaker — June 17th, 2013 @ 9:35 am
The one major thing it’s missing is multiple tags! It drives me crazy. Like I had this cake tagged in GR as “cake”, “chocolate”, “myBirthday” and in Feedly I’d only be able to tag it with one of those things. Grr…
oh and amanda – feedly imports your starred items!!
I have a lengthy post grousing about the disappearance of Google Reader as well.
I have gone over to Feedly as well, and though I don’t love it yet, I am satisfied with it.
I didn’t have a lot of tags, though I had many starred posts that I “was going to do something with one of these days.” Since the announcement, I’ve bookmarked all my starred posts instead, and plan to implement some system there in the future. (Oh, being a librarian – I have to organize things…)
I tried importing the recipes to Pepperplate, but that only works quickly for those sites that have agreements with Pepperplate.
In Chrome I have added the Google reader “theme” expansion to feedly, so it looks more like the old Google Reader.
I know that I am not going to use Google’s services Google+ or GoogleNow for anything like this though, because who knows when they will disappear.
Have been shopping some of the other options, there’s a feeder called The Old Reader (http://theoldreader.com) that allows you to import your Google RSS. Operates in a similar manner but a bit on the slow side.
beantownbaker — June 21st, 2013 @ 11:51 am
Oh I’ll have to check that one out – thanks!