Top 10 Easy Recipes for When You Want to Be Fancy
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With as much time as we’ve all spent at home now, many of us are getting used to improvising fancy nights in. Maybe you’re treating just yourself, you and a partner (or partner in crime), or celebrating the family together. In any case, you need easy recipes for when you want to be fancy.
Friends, these are my top 10 fancy but easy recipes. These are recipes that require little work, few ingredients, or both. So, here we go!
10. Browned Butter Vanilla Texas Sheet Cake
This beauty is first because it’s quick to make and explodes with brilliant flavor. It even makes your home smell like Disney World. That’s the dream!
Pairing the nuttiness of browned butter with good vanilla and just the right amount of salt means every bite of cake is pure decadence. It’s really hard to stop eating it, honestly.
I’ve also pared this recipe down to a quarter-sheet size. If you have a quarter sheet pan, awesome. If not, I like to use a 9×13 pan for mine. This, I think, simplifies things as you don’t have excessive leftovers to store.
9. Chocolate Cake
This is no mere chocolate cake. In fact, if I have to make a chocolate cake for a special event, this is THE one. You mix it together in a single bowl. You bake it in a single pan. I mean, really. That is simplicity devine.
But then after your meager work, you’re blessed with this gorgeous, though understated, chocolate cake crowned with the most luscious tangy, chocolate cream cheese frosting.
The cake is moist, tender, and melts on your tongue. Then, the frosting is so explosively flavorful while remaining fluffy and light. The chocolate flavor is balanced just so as not to feel overly decadent. You’ll want seconds for sure.
8. Rosemary Asiago Pumpkin Soda Bread
For something a little savory, I present rosemary asiago pumpkin soda bread. The name is a mouthful, but you’ll be so glad for the first real bite of this quick and easy bread.
Salty, herby, earthy, nutty, and moist, this bread easily remedies a bland meal, turning it into something festive. Not only is it a wonderful side dish, but you can also easily turn into the star of the show with a fabulous grilled cheese.
Take two slices of your bread, good quality sharp cheddar, maybe a couple apple slices, and grill your sandwich until the cheese is melty. Trust me. It’s fabulous!
7. Cannoli Ice Cream
There’s nothing easier than 2-ingredient ice cream. However, there’s nothing more enjoyable than my cannoli ice cream. Each bite tastes like a real-deal cannoli without the work of frying shells.
Crush some pizzelles, chop some cherries, mix everything else all together, and that’s it. The hardest part is waiting for your ice cream to freeze. But it’s all worth it in the end because there’s absolutely no store-bought ice cream that can live up to this standard.
This is the height of creamy perfection studded with cherries and chocolate, swirled with mascarpone, and perfumed with just the tiniest hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. And it’s so easy to make.
6. Cream of Mushroom Soup
Cream of mushroom soup seems a little pedestrian, but trust me when I say this recipe is pure understated elegance. I use an Instant Pot for this recipe to reduce dishes and cooking time. However, it’s easy enough to adapt to a stovetop or Crock-Pot.
Mushrooms get white-glove service when sautéed to meaty perfection alongside caramel onions and toasty garlic. Then, when simmered in white wine, vegetable broth, and a little soy sauce, those mushrooms really sparkle.
I use an immersion blender to achieve the perfect creamy texture with or without cream. That means this is the most elegant of easy recipes to please your vegetarian friends.
5. Salted Chocolate Almond Butter Cookies
This is one of the more grown-up cookies I like to make. It’s a simple little almond butter cookie, but then it takes a half bath in dark chocolate and receives a sparkly dusting of good sea salt.
Each of these little cookies is sweet, salty, nutty, and purely decadent especially when you use good chocolate. They pair really well with an afternoon cup of coffee or with a little amaretto at the end of the day.
This recipe is especially simple because they don’t require a chill time. However, I do recommend storing them in the fridge to keep the chocolate solid.
4. Caramel Apple Galette
Of all the fancy but easy recipes to make, I love my caramel apple galette. While, yes, I do have instructions to make your own caramel (which I highly recommend), and I have a recipe for pie crust (which I also highly recommend), you can always use store bought caramel and pie crust.
The key thing here is that it looks fancy when it looks rustic. So, you don’t have to worry about how pretty your crust looks or how the apples are arrayed. In fact, the messier it turns out, the fancier it seems. Wild, right?
Part of what makes this recipe so fancy though is the fragrance. If you do choose to make your own caramel, that’s a perfume no one can beat. It’s rich, warm, and intoxicating. That’s a smell that fills your whole home.
Then, when you get the whole galette into the oven, cinnamon and apples come out to play. There’s not a candle on earth that smells as good as the real thing baking in your oven.
And who doesn’t feel fancy saying, “Yes, I made a caramel apple galette for dessert.” Try it. You’ll feel like you need a monocle.
3. Cranberry Coffee Cake
In terms of easy recipes that still seem fancy, this is my favorite breakfast choice. It uses self-rising flour to reduce the ingredients list, leftover cranberry sauce to clean up the fridge, and it makes everything feel purposeful and perfect.
Yet another recipe that smells great baking, cranberry coffee cake balances tart berries with a crispy, crackly cinnamon topping that instantly warms your kitchen.
On top of being easy to throw together, smelling great, and looking lovely, it also happens to be low in fat and sugar (I recommend using stevia instead of sugar for the cake). So, while you’re enjoying your second slice with a great cup of coffee, you’re not going to feel awful afterward.
2. Dark Chocolate Hummus
Dark chocolate hummus is one of those things that sounds as fancy as it looks and tastes. The secret is that you only have to throw everything in a food processor to make it. How easy is that?
It’s also vegan with no processed sugar, and it happens to taste exactly like brownie batter. So, while your family thinks they’re getting a decadent treat, you won’t have to worry about anything.
I like my hummus as a dip, but I also highly recommend it in a parfait. Parfaits up the “fancy” quotient. All you have to do there is layer your hummus with vanilla yogurt and berries in a little glass.
It’s also really nice on a slice of quality toast with a sprinkling of chopped almonds and fresh blueberries. Really, part of the appeal is that it can be used in multiple ways, all of which seem really fancy.
1. Blueberry Arugula Salad
And in the number one spot is my favorite salad ever: blueberry arugula salad with seared lemon dressing. With all of 7 ingredients (2 of which are salt and pepper), there has never been anything so easy with so much wow-factor.
You’ll toast some walnuts and toss them together with blueberries and arugula. Then, you’ll sear your sliced lemon (in the same pan you just used to toast the nuts). Squeeze out the juice, and mix that with olive oil, salt, and pepper for the easiest but most incredible dressing imaginable.
It’s a clean, healthy recipe that’s easy to make and tastes like 5 stars. Top it with the protein of your own choosing. I’ve had it with simple grilled chicken, salmon, and even just on its own. Occasionally, I will sprinkle on a little feta for fun.
Every bite is a little different. Combinations of sweet and juicy, peppery and crisp, sour and fresh, nutty and crunchy play differently every time you raise your fork. It’s hard not to fall in love with it.
My Top 10 Fancy but Easy Recipes
While I can never fault a finicky macaron recipe, sometimes all it takes to please a crowd is something simple like a great cake or a zippy salad. If you’re really feeling your oats, you might even combine a few recipes for a truly elegant evening at home.
Mushroom soup, blueberry arugula salad, rosemary asiago pumpkin soda bread, and a brown butter vanilla cake for dessert. What could be better?
Comment below if you have questions, concerns, or opinions. And tag me @ellejayathome on Instagram or Twitter if you share pictures from any of my recipes. I love to hear from you!
