Thanksgiving came and went fast…really fast. For the first time in years, I cooked the right amount of food. Not too much. Not too little. Enough to make a couple of sandwiches the day after. Not enough to make us sick of turkey.

One thing we didn’t manage to finish was the canned cranberry sauce. Yes…CANNED! I’ll whip salad dressings, avoid jar tomato sauce, but when it comes to cranberry sauce the can gets a pass.

And because we had nothing left to go with the it we baked this ‘oh so good’ Cranberry Sauce Crumble Cake. The recipe came from a holiday baking class I took at The Gourmandise School in Santa Monica many years ago. It never fails, no matter what the choice of jam is. I’ve even used Nutella instead of jam. Good every time!

The plan is to eat it with some hot cocoa as we decorate the Christmas tree tonight.

Cheers to a ‘dealicious’ Thanksgiving…onto Christmas countdown!

Cranberry Sauce Crumble Cake

Butter the sides of an 8″ cake pan and preheat the oven to 375F.

In medium bowl, whisk together in this order:

1 egg
1/2 cup of milk
6 tablespoons of melted butter

Add the following dry ingredients to the wet mix in this order:

1/2 cup of sugar
1 cup of flour
pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder

Pour cake mix into the pan and spread evenly. Top the mix with dots of cranberry sauce (I used approximately 1 cup of cranberry sauce. May substitute with any jam or Nutella.) Reserve.

Mix the following ingredients for the crumble topping:

6 tablespoons of melted butter
1cup of flour
1/4 brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt

Rub the ingredients until crumbles form and top the cake and sauce/jam with it.

Bake for 30 minutes or until crumble top is lightly browned.

Until not too long ago, Thanksgiving was just something which I had no understanding of, whatsoever. Growing up in Brazil, turkey was a protein that we mostly ate at Christmas…and Christmas only. Since I moved to US zillion years ago this holiday and its special meaning has evolved with me. Thanksgiving used to be a nice long break from work and time to shop the best deals. Nothing else. Then some Brazilian friends married some American friends and unexpectedly we’re all gorging on turkey and cranberry sauce and all the rest of the food that we traditionally saved for Christmas. Next, I married my American Hawaiian husband and we created our own Thanksgiving tradition. We feasted on ‘feijoada’ (a delicious Brazilian pork and beans stew); ‘kalua pig’ (because one can’t get enough pig); and even paella because we felt thankful for our cultural diversity and taste buds.

It was not until our first born started kindergarden that we had a real traditional Thanksgiving meal and only because he actually requested. Since then, many turkeys have been roasted and many side dishes made it to our favorite list. Every year, something different is introduced to our ever evolving menu…a side, a appetizer, a dessert or even a cocktail. Our last year winner was this amazing Balsamic-glazed brussels sprouts from The AOC Cookbook.

For this year Thanksgiving dinner, I’ve been collecting some fall recipes from my favorite chefs, cooks, cookbooks, bloggers, pinners and instagrammers. So many dishes I’d love to cook but there’s always that ONE recipe that pops out and makes me want to run to the kitchen and start the magic. I may not even wait for Thanksgiving to try them out.

Here are the 2014 Thanksgiving recipe nominees!