15 Recipes to Make Magic With Your Food Processor

If you, as a child or as an adult, read Calvin and Hobbes, you’ll remember Calvin’s transmogrifier. Ostensibly, the transmogrifier was a cardboard box—but we know that it was magic, capable of transforming one thing into another thing almost instantaneously (though only Calvin and Hobbes could see its effects).

If there were a culinary equivalent of the transmogrifier, it would be the food processor. Greens zip into pesto! Bananas become ice cream! Nuts and beans become butters and dips! Magic visible to all!

Here are 15 ways to transmogrify with your food processor (plus a few extra tools):

1. Donna Hay’s Food Processor Carrot Cake by Sarah Jampel

The most (only) annoying thing about carrot cake is the painstaking carrot-grating you have to do. This brilliant cake skips that step by letting you chuck peeled carrot pieces into the food processor to get them finely chopped up. Then, add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl of the food processor, pulse a bit more, and your batter’s done.

2. The Kitchn’s One-Ingredient Ice Cream by Genius Recipes

This “ice” cream is one of the internet’s absolute favorites, and for a few good reasons: It contains exactly one-ingredient (bananas!), and it requires only one bowl (the one of your food processor). Beyond that, you can customize however you want: add nuts, 

3. Raw Vegan Chocolate Coconut Bars by Kendra Vaculin

In these raw chocolate-coconut bars, there’s no cooking or baking. There’s no sugar. There’s not even an extra dish to clean up (you just mix up the sticky batter in your food processor). Thus, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be making them…now.

4. Calabrian Walnut Cake (Torta di Noci) by Emiko

Your food processor will come to the rescue (once again!) in this three-ingredient walnutty wonder. It’s even better the next day (if it lasts that long). 

5. Key Lime Pie by Yossy Arefi

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It’s hard to imagine a pie that’s more refreshing—or easier—than key lime. The filling is mixed together in a bowl in mere seconds, and the graham cracker crust is blitzed up in the food processor in a few more. Press in the crust into a pie plate, pour in the filling, and boom. 

6. Gazpacho Without a Recipe by Rémy Robert 

You may need a food processor to make gazpacho, but you certainly don’t need a recipe! Just combine the freshest, ripest tomatoes you can find, a handful of cucumbers or sweet peppers, some corn, zucchini, herbs, aromatics, and whatever other summer bounty you like best—and give it a whir in your food processor till smoothish. Enjoy with a spoon and a generous drizzle of olive oil.

7. All About Grinding Meat by Catherine Lamb

Did you know you don’t need a meat grinder to make the juiciest, freshest-tasting burgers around? Instead, rely on—yep, you guessed it!—your handy-dandy food processor. 

More: Now that you’ve ground your meat, make a burger with it.

8. Turnip Burgers by Alexandra Stafford

Speaking of burgers, this hearty vegetarian spin—made with food-processed turnips, rice, seeds, and zingy herbs—will quickly replace your favorite frozen variety (and be just as easy to whip up).

9. World’s Easiest Falafel and Tzatziki by marisab67

The food processor does twice the work in this recipe, so you don’t have to: it brings together the herby chickpea mix for our (pan-fried!) falafels, and then blitzes up our creamy, zippy tzatziki. 

10. Variegated Spiced Latkes by Sagegreen

Parsnips, sweet potatoes, ginger, russets, onions—all stuff we love to eat, but don’t necessarily love to shred finely for latke-making. The food processor handles the tough part, so you can get to the fun: the frying. 

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11. Nut Butter Without a Recipe by Marian Bull

The ultimate food-processor magic trick? Turning dry-roasted nuts into the smoothest, nuttiest nut butters you ever did see. Just toss the nuts into the processor, add a pinch of salt, then let ‘er rip for between two and five minutes to get your desired creaminess.

12. Alice’s House Truffles 4.0 by Alice Medrich

These rich, deeply chocolatey truffles lean on the food processor to give them a cloudlike, whipped texture with next-to-nothing cleanup. One community member called them “divine”;  another, “very clever”; and yet another, “a winner.” 

13. Whip Up Your Own Coconut Butter by Ashley McLaughlin

Similar to our nut-butter disappearing act, you can use your food processor to make coconut butter, too. Throw in unsweeted shredded coconut, step away for between 5 and 10 minutes, and come back to smooth, coconutty bliss. 

14. Tara Duggan’s Chard Stalk Hummus by Genius Recipes

The food processor helps hardy chard stalks transform into smoother-than-smooth hummus, just begging to be drizzled with olive oil and mopped up with pita. 

More: Prefer a chickpea hummus? We’ve got a recipe for that, too.

15. Kale Pesto Orechiette by Brussels Sprouts for Breakfast

Pesto is one of the food processor’s natural allies—it needs to be smooth, but not too smooth, chunky, but not too chunky, and able to take on more liquid throughout the process (in this case, through the helpful feeding tube at the top of the machine. This kale variety, chock-full of Parmesan cheese, Dijon mustard, and red pepper flakes, is no exception. 

We originally ran this article in 2015, but we’re running an updated version of it today because doesn’t a bowl of gazpacho sound fine right about now?

What’s your favorite use for your food processor? Share your magic below!