Top Recipes of 2020 (with highlights and failures)

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I do these posts every year, and it’s fun to see not only the top recipes (the ones that you guys loved the most) and then I share some of the highlights and failures. It’s not all success after success in the recipe development and testing world lol.

TOP RECIPES OF 2020

Raspberry cream cheese swirl brownies-these are so crazy good, perfect for Valentines Day
Freezer butternut squash soup-I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve made this, it’s warm, comforting, delicious and great for having ready to go in the freezer
3-Ingredient banana pancakes-super easy, healthy, and the kids love them
Sheet pan ground turkey balsamic meatloaf dinner– a family dinner, made all on one sheet pan
Grilled sweet potatoes – never knew one could grill sweet potatoes until this summer! Game changer
5 Ingredient slow cooker turkey meatballs– they have a secret healthy ingredient and are like a meal all in one meatball
Quick pickled eggs-I have these in my fridge at all times now, perfect for a high protein snack or lunch
5 Ingredient pesto chicken salad bagel sandwiches – such an easy lunch idea
Remoulade sauce recipe -this sauce is just incredible, try it on burgers, as a french fry dip, on vegetables, so good!
5 Ingredient Instant Pot beer brats – I can’t believe what a fun and quick dinner this is, we have these all the time!

HIGHLIGHTS

Biggest highlight: I’d say the biggest highlight of the past year was that my small business is still in business. This is something I am truly grateful for, and of course it wouldn’t be possible without the help of the SweetPhi team, and YOU amazing beautiful readers!!
Learned something new: Switched from 100% natural light photography to incorporate some artificial light photography. It’s been a complete game changer (allowed me the ability to shoot, for example, a coffee recipe at 9pm <- not the smartest idea with kids who wake me up at 5). It’s also led me to be super creative and learn new skills, which is something I always love doing. Also, we’re doing more video and reached 100 subscribers to the SweetPhi YouTube channel, it’s not a lot, but it’s slowly growing!
Personal highlight: On a personal note, a big highlight was that we moved. During a pandemic, with small kids.
Something I never thought I’d do: start a sourdough starter, definitely an emotional experience, but it’s taught me to work with doughs and create some amazing recipes like sourdough pizza and sourdough scallion pancake.’
My favorite kitchen find: these 26oz. Weck jars – I use them

FAILURES/FLOPS

Recipe testing for a post: freezer to slow cooker or freezer to oven recipe testing pork souvlaki with Greek potatoes. It was so disgusting, the potatoes were watery and the pork was rock hard. It was in recipe testing for my freezer meals post. Just so you know how much testing goes in to recipes. This one did not make the cut. But what did make the cut was the Mediterranean pork on that post. SO good, makes great pitas.
Photography background fail: I shoot photos on a heavy wooden backgrounds. I was trying out some vinyl backgrounds I’d heard someone recommend because they’re light, portable and supposedly “look” like other backgrounds. Welp, they’re this weird small size with seams I had to edit out and I had to figure out how to tape them up, and I put a hot bowl of soup on one of them and the paint(?) peeled right off. Big fail for me.
Bitter and dense: I tried making biscuits with only whole wheat flour. They were bitter and dense, major failure.
Soggy and smelly: you want to know what does not freeze well? This one zucchini cheddar bread I was testing. It was absolutely gross, I wanted to vomit. It was like soggy and smelled rancid.

Most fails: the most fails definitely happened in the sourdough department (this one is also in my highlights – don’t give up!!). So many random trail and errors. There were lots of discs (instead of loaves, below), burnt loaves, and weird recipes I tried making with sourdough starter discard (note- brownies and chocolate chip cookies made with sourdough discard were straight up gross lol). You can read my whole emotional experience with sourdough – there were a lot of tears.