Our Turn: Friendsgiving recipes to impress your guests

Friendsgiving, a spin on the Thanksgiving holiday, has been adopted by college students and young adults in recent years. Often, this age group travels to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with their families. Friendsgiving offers an opportunity to share the holiday with friends as well.

Most Friendsgivings are potluck style. The Arts & Culture section of the FSView has shared their favorite Friendsgiving recipes so that you can impress your friend group this year.

Raquelle Elson, Arts & Culture Editor: Caramel Apple Cheesecake

Let’s be honest, the entire point of making a dish for Friendsgiving is to make something to dazzle everyone with your incredible cooking skills. The best, and one of the easiest recipes to do that is caramel apple cheesecake. Apple pie is a Thanksgiving staple, but a lot of people have qualms with the inconsistent crusts these desserts often have. Cheesecake, while an impressive dish to master, is not incredibly difficult to make. The combination of the two is a sweet, festive dish that will astonish your friends and yield enough slices to allow everyone to get seconds, which they will want. 

Tanner Block, Deputy Arts & Culture Editor: Ultra-fluffy mashed potatoes

Mashed potatoes are sneakily one of the best Thanksgiving sides every year. For a holiday that traditionally creates controversy over its food options, mashed potatoes are a delicious, inoffensive side dish that almost everybody enjoys. It’s also incredibly simple to make, another plus that makes mashed potatoes such a reliable dish in a Thanksgiving spread. This recipe takes your potato game to a whole new level as it uses a ricer to make your potatoes extra fluffy and creamy. I guarantee you won’t be surprised to see your friends take second helpings of this dish. 

Grace Myatt, Senior Staff Writer: Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin bread is by far my absolute favorite dessert of the autumn season. It is a delicious, soft, warm hug as the air begins to chill and family and friends gather around to share a delightful meal. As someone who finds themselves lost in the kitchen, a loaf of pumpkin bread is a perfect dessert to bring to your friends without much hassle. There is also a lot you can do with this simple recipe: add chocolate chips, sprinkle powdered sugar, stir in cinnamon sugar or add some nuts. Pumpkin bread is, without a doubt, the perfect Friendsgiving gift that will have your friends gushing over the moist dough and flavorful toppings.

Amelie Galbraith: Apple & blackberry crumble

Dessert is obviously the most important contribution to any gathering that involves food and Friendsgiving would be incomplete without a seasonal cobbler. Flaky, crumbly pastry with warm spices and fruit — what’s not to love? A baked apple and blackberry crumble is an English spin on the quintessentially American apple pie and is even easier to make. All you need for this autumnal dessert is flour, sugar, butter and fruit. A layer of baked berries and apples is topped with crumbly pastry, which adds a satisfying crunch to complement the soft fruit. Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a cheeky dollop of custard and you have a Friendsgiving dessert as comforting as a homestyle apple pie, but even yummier.

Catalina Salgado and Kaylor Scott: Sweet Potato Casserole

This casserole captures the essence of Friendsgiving to us — the feeling when your friend group gathers around good food, and for a couple of perfect hours, they feel like family. Feast your eyes upon something that tastes as gooey and good as it looks. Sweet potato casserole, known for its many variations, is a delightfully sweet appetizer that prepares you for the richness of dessert to come after dinner. It features toasted marshmallows, crumbles of brown sugar and toasted sweet potatoes lathered in butter.

Is it the healthiest option? Obviously not — but as it bakes, the aroma fills the house and sees everyone drift to the kitchen with their eyes stuck to the oven, counting down the minutes until it finds its way to the table. When the time is right, everyone digs in. The crackly, golden-brown topping of crunchy pecans, crisp flour and caramelised sugar shatters perfectly to reveal soft and velvety mashed sweet potatoes, a combination that melts on your tongue. It’s the kind of dessert that gets everyone talking and laughing, with playful arguments over who deserves the crispiest corner pieces, while we reach for seconds, thirds and fourths.

Emmie Klekamp: Creamed spinach

There’s nothing better than a recipe that sounds deceivingly healthy.

The key thing to keep in mind with creamed spinach is that the fact that spinach is a vegetable. This cancels out the sheer amount of cream cheese and parmesan inside. The latter is secondary; it may as well not matter. 

What is important to note is that the dish is green and therefore good for you.

Creamed spinach is a fantastic side dish to add gumption to your plate, meshing well with virtually all entree dishes that can be included on a Friendsgiving plate. Slather it on top of your preferred meat or meat alternative, mix it with some mashed potatoes, or put some more dairy on your fork by pairing it with the mac and cheese. While creamed spinach and dessert may be uncharted territory for most, you can’t count it out until you’ve tried it.

Holly Whitty: Mac and cheese

A Thanksgiving staple – I always go for baked mac and cheese first when it hits the table. You might be familiar with making the typical boxed mac and cheese, but this recipe will truly elevate your experience. The mix of creamy cheeses, soft noodles and the crunchy breadcrumb topping is the perfect side to your Friendsgiving meal, especially if you aren’t the biggest fan of typical Thanksgiving food. This dish is also rather easy to make, only needing a few simple ingredients, including some that you may already have in your refrigerator. Create the perfect addition to your feast with this staple side.

Olivia Klimek: Honey Butter Rolls

Dare I say there’s actually nothing better than buttered bread? A simple honey buttered roll platter is guaranteed to clear at a college Friendsgiving potluck — it’s the ultimate crowd pleaser. I mean, everyone likes bread. This sweet, buttery side perfectly complements other Thanksgiving foods and is incredibly easy to make. You can customize it as much as you’d like. You have the choice of making homemade rolls, if that’s something you’re into, or you can purchase a pack of Hawaiian rolls from the grocery store, which are just as good. Apart from the rolls, the only other ingredients you’ll need are butter and honey. You can create a whipped honey butter spread by whipping the two ingredients together over medium-high heat until it has a light and fluffy consistency. Brush the spread on top of your warmed rolls and you’re ready to go.

Our Turn is a compilation of contributions from the Arts & Culture section of the FSView & Florida Flambeau and students at Florida State University. Email our staff at contact@fsview.com. 

This article originally appeared on FSU News: Our Turn: Friendsgiving recipes to impress your guests

Reporting by Arts & Culture Staff, FSView / FSU News

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect