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!

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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!

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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!

:)