Four Five-Minute Appetizers

I try my best when I have a get-together, to make sure that I make as much as I can ahead of time. Or, I rely on recipes like these four five-minute holiday appetizers. I can easily whip these up as my guests arrive and be out there to enjoy the conversation in no time. 

I love to cook. I really really love to cook. What I don’t love is the cleanup after cooking. And I don’t love being stuck in the kitchen the whole time while I’m supposedly entertaining people in my home. These are the perfect solution for that!

UPDATED FOR 2022!

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Four Easy Five-Minute Appetizers

I first made this appetizer (option 1) for Thanksgiving. It was a huge hit with my guests and an even bigger one with my daughter. In fact, she’s been begging me to make it again ever since. Funny thing is that she’s not a big fan of cream cheese. Or caramel sauce. Or walnuts. And yet she loved this and keeps asking for it again.

It’s not an overwhelming request. These take 5 minutes to put together and are incredibly delicious. For each one of the options, you need a brick of plain cream cheese. In this case, I cut the bricks in half to make smaller batches of more varieties. 

How to Make Easy Five-Minute Holiday Appetizers with Four Options:

Option 1:

Brick of cream cheese, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of caramel sauce, about 1/3 cup of walnuts (pecans are also good here)

Option 2:

Brick of cream cheese, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of maple syrup, about 1/3 cup of walnuts or pecans

Option 3:

Brick of cream cheese, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of honey (I used a savory buckwheat honey), about 1/3 cup of sliced almonds

Option 4:

Brick of cream cheese, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of whole berry cranberry sauce (heat it up slightly to make it a little bit runnier), about 1/3 cup of sliced almonds

Dipping options:

Thinly sliced pears or apples, crackers, and pretzels are our favorites

See? Easy peasy! 

2022 Update – Our Cream Cheese Board:

This year, we decided to do this “butter board” style for our Thanksgiving celebration. It’s just as easy to do as using the separate bricks of cream cheese. We purchased the soft cream cheese but you could easily buy a brick or two and let them warm up a bit to make them more spreadable.

We spread a layer of cream cheese over the center section of the board, leaving space around the edges for the dippers. (Note: we had a separate container of pretzels. We would have needed a bigger board to include them right with the cream cheese).

Then, mentally dividing the cream cheese into a few sections, we topped each one with different combinations of sauces, nuts, and dried fruits as suggested above. It was delicious and definitely one of the showstoppers of our celebration.

The other showstopper was our butter board that we served with a baguette and some sourdough bread. We didn’t make this ourselves (although it would be easy enough to do). We ordered ours from the Posh Cheeseboard Company here in London Ontario. In addition to the butter board, we ordered a fall-themed dessert tray from them. Both were scrumptious and we can highly recommend them (not sponsored, just huge fans!).

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