I’m a hardcore Buzzfeed Tasty fan and have always wanted to make some of the food that’s presented on the page, but I’d never been given the opportunity to…until Thanksgiving of this past year when my mom charged me with the difficult task of making appetizers and desserts that everyone would enjoy. I was so excited (as many of my friends know because I wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks) because I could finally test out some recipes from Tasty. Here’s how they turned out.
Parmesan Herb Cauliflower Bites
https://tasty.co/recipe/parmesan-herb-cauliflower-bites
I was a little hesitant to make these because not everyone loves cauliflower, but I made it because I didn’t want to put the effort into making the chicken nuggets that my younger brother recommended. These were and super easy to make!! The hardest part was breaking the head of cauliflower into smaller-nearly bite sized pieces, but after that, the prep work is a piece of cake!
7/9 Thanksgiving Guests would Recommend
Pesto Mozzarella Cheese Balls
https://tasty.co/recipe/pesto-mozzarella-cheese-balls
After looking at the recipe for these dough balls, I thought how hard can this really be? I just have to cut each roll in half, put in a dab of pesto, and a little cube of mozzarella cheese. These were a bit more difficult to make than I expected. You have to make sure you get the proportion of dough to pesto to mozzarella just right or the pesto will start dripping everywhere and cheese will melt out when you cook them. Once you get into the swing of things, they’re super easy, and it’s so satisfying to pull them apart after cooking them.
9/9 Thanksgiving Guests would Recommend
Cookie Dough Stuffed Brownie Truffle
https://tasty.co/recipe/cookie-dough-stuffed-brownie-truffles
In theory, these look delectable. Edible cookie dough inside of a freshly baked brownie and dipped in melted chocolate! What could be better?? These treats, however, did not turn out as planned. Rolling out the brownies with a rolling pin was A LOT harder than I expected it to be. The brownies ended up breaking off into tiny pieces, and the pieces that didn’t crumble were up too thick. So when I tried to wrap them around the cookie dough and dip them in the chocolate they were way larger than bite-sized and looked a bit like…well I’ll leave that up to your imagination. Let’s just say they looked absolutely unappetizing. I ended up making my brother and my dad try a piece of them without letting them see the treat, and they both said it was really good, but once they looked at it they no longer felt compelled to eat it…I didn’t even try it.
2/9 Thanksgiving Guests would Recommend (but more would recommend if you make them look like the picture and not my disgusting-looking version)
Edible Cookie Dough Bites
Not exactly a Buzzfeed Tasty recipe
So I ended up using the edible cookie dough from the previous recipe to make little chocolate chip cookie dough bites dipped in chocolate, since I had so much left over from unsuccessful attempt at making truffles. They were super easy to make (literally I just made the cookie dough from the recipe and then chilled it, took it out of the refrigerator and made little bite-sized balls, froze those, dipped them in melted chocolate chips, and froze them again) and they were so good that I made them again for Friendsgiving the next day!
9/9 Thanksgiving Guests would Recommend
6/7 Friendsgiving Guests would Recommend (and the one that doesn’t recommend doesn’t like chocolate so…if you like chocolate and cookies you’d like them)
Overall, I had a really good time making these recipes with my mom, and 75% of them were big hits, so I’d say we had a successful Thanksgiving dinner, at least in the appetizer and dessert departments.
By Elizabeth Baxter