What’s Been Cooking: December 2025 (Year In Review)

As the year comes to a close, it’s always fun looking back on both the personal and professional milestones we’ve reached – and the memories we’ve made. 2025 was a crazy ride, and I have no doubt 2026 will hold the same excitement and busy-ness of this year! 

Here’s a quick recap of what our December, and our 2025, held for us, plus a look at what we’re excited about for the year ahead.

❄️ December Fun

December was a bit chaotic – it felt like the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas just disappeared between all the holiday cooking, gift shopping, and cheesy movie-watching (and work, of course).

But it was definitely filled with lots of fun and good food, including a homemade pasta night, slow cooker pork belly that we used for tacos and ramen, a giant cookie and barbecue pulled pork nachos for Alex’s birthday, and a decadent peanut butter pretzel pie for mine (any other December babies out there?).

We also finished filming our game day recipe series on social so that we can gear up for the Super Bowl! Be on the lookout for lots of football food content in the weeks leading up to Feb 8.

😋 Top 10 Recipes of 2025

We love ending the year with a look at what the most popular recipes on our site were! Here are our top 10 most loved recipes of the year:

1. Spaghetti carbonara (no egg)
2. Easy baked penne
3. Pork dumplings
4. Taco Bell cheesy gordita crunch
5. Spicy Szechuan dumpling soup
6. Shakshuka for two
7. Spicy butter chicken
8. Freezer friendly chicken marinades
9. Spinach cottage cheese pasta
10. Korean slow cooker gochujang chicken

Plus, a few honorable mentions that fell just short of the top 10 but are some of our personal favorites:

• Buttermilk protein pancakes
• Overnight New York style bagels
• 3-ingredient beer battered onion rings

🎊 2025 Candid Cooks Highlights

2025 was a huge year for us in terms of growing The Candid Cooks. In just the past year, we…

• Joined a top ad network so we can continue giving you free recipes
• Redesigned our website to be more colorful, user-friendly, and easier to navigate
• Started regularly posting videos on our social media channels to show how to make our favorite recipes
• Shifted our email strategy so we can be more helpful to you and share the most relevant recipes when you need them most
• Had our first technical audit, which will help our site run better for you
• Made a pact to start posting regularly on LinkedIn (follow our page here!)
• Partnered with some of our favorite food brands, including Maya Kaimal, Toufayan, and Bertolli

And it feels like we’re just getting started! 

Our focus has always been on how we can help you – whether that’s with more helpful recipes, a better experience on our website, or video tutorials for any visual learners out there. 

If there’s something you want to see more of from us, tell us in the comments below. Expect to see more improvements in 2026 centered around your feedback!

💙 Top 5 Personal Moments

Aside from all the nitty gritty of running a food blog, this year also held plenty of new and fun experiences for us. We won’t bore you with everything we did this year – here’s a short list of our top 5 moments of 2025:

1. King Arthur Baking School – We took a class to learn how to make croissants, which ended with us bringing home two giant boxes of freshly baked goodies, plus extra laminated dough to use at home. The class was so much fun and very educational – we can’t wait to go back and try another one of their classes!
2. Shenandoah National Park road trip – We took a road trip down to Virginia in the spring and spent a week hiking and enjoying nature. (If you ever visit, hiking Old Rag is a must! It was one of the coolest hikes we’ve ever done). While we were in the area, we stopped by Alex’s cousin’s restaurant and bar in the Charlottesville area (Botanical Fare and Bar Botanical) to try their food and cocktails. As expected, everything was absolutely delicious!
3. Celebrating our first wedding anniversary – We took a trip back to western MA where we got married for a weekend of reminiscing and enjoying our favorite restaurants in the area. Our wedding was at an apple orchard, so of course we stopped by for an apple cider donut and a walk around the property!
4. Hiking Mount Mansfield – We started our journey to hike the Vermont 5 with a trek up the highest peak in the state. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much of a view from the top since the smoke from the Canadian wildfires was so bad, but we checked a new mountain off our list! The next 4 peaks are on tap for this upcoming summer since we didn’t get around to them before the snow started.
5. Lots of scratch cooking – This year, we learned how to make pasta, burger buns, almond milk, and a few other treats from scratch (including a delicious Roman brioche bun called maritozzi). The more we learn to cook from scratch, the more we find ourselves wanting to! Pasta is absolutely worth the effort for a fun date night at home – it’s so much more delicious made fresh. Next up for 2026 is homemade ravioli!

🌟 Exciting Plans For 2026

We’ve got big plans for the year ahead! Here’s a sneak peek of what we’re looking forward to:

Tastemaker Conference

We’re heading to sunny California next week for our first ever Tastemaker Conference. It’s a 2-day event for food bloggers focused on education, community building, and networking – and we can’t wait! It’s been on our bucket list for awhile, so it’s super exciting to finally be attending.

We also get entry to the Winter FancyFaire* with our ticket, which is a specialty food trade show. Aside from getting to network with food brands, we can’t wait to sample all the delicious treats and watch live cooking demos. It’ll be a tasty week for sure, and we’ll have plenty to share when we get back!

More Helpful Recipes

Since our technical audit this fall, we’ve been on a mission to update our blog posts with more helpful content. You might have noticed our newer recipes look totally different, including photos of ingredients and recipe steps, plus expert tips and answers to common questions. Be on the lookout for more helpful updates in the new year!

Media Features

We’re excited to share more of our expertise and story across the internet in 2026! Our meal planning tips and advice will be featured in an article by Homes & Gardens this month (we’ll share the link when it’s live), but that’s just the beginning. We’ll share a lot of these updates over on our LinkedIn page, so make sure to give us a follow there if you want to stay in the loop.

Thanks for following along with our updates! We’re excited to usher in a new year of good food, fun adventures, and delicious recipes in 2026, and can’t wait to keep cooking alongside you 💙

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