Out of the Box Avocado Recipes

We’re crazy about food — you could even say we’re cooking addicts. Along with binders full of recipes, magazines and cookbooks, we are always finding inspiration around the web for what to cook. Inspired Picks is where we gather all our favorite things found on food blogs and cooking websites. Each week we’ll choose a new topic and share our inspiration with you.

Inspired Picks: Avocado Recipes

You can never go wrong with Guacamole, but we wanted to dig deeper — so we found a bunch of out of the box avocado recipes — Recipes where creamy avocado is the star.

Avocados in Dessert

Did you know avocados are the perfect base for ice cream? They are — really. Add them along with some cream and sugar to a food processor. Churn and freeze. We found two amazing ideas that incorporated coconut milk, too. This Avocado Coconut Ice Cream has cream added, while this Coconut Avocado Frozen Yogurt uses Greek yogurt.

How about mousse? This Chocolate Avocado Mousse is gluten free, egg free, dairy free and vegan. It looks so creamy, too.

Homemade Dressings and Salads

Since we started with dessert, we should probably move to something a little lighter. Avocados are perfect in salads or turned into salad dressings. This Grapefruit and Avocado Salad looks so refreshing. Avocados and grapefruit are delicious together — creamy, sweet and tart.

That recipe adds avocados to the salad, but you could just as easily make a homemade avocado dressing. This Avocado Caesar Dressing looks extra creamy.

Perfect Avocado Appetizer Ideas

Whenever we invite friends over, we’ll pick up an avocado (or 6 — that depends on the friend and their level of avocado addition). Then, we’ll go about making some sort of avocado-friendly appetizer.

Toasts, bruschetta or crostinis are always fun — we just love this Roasted Tomato Caprese with Avocados (yum) or our Bacon, Avocado and Tomato Crostini. Dips and salsas never let us down so our Spicy Avocado and Pineapple Salsa or this creamy Avocado Hummus is just perfect.

You’ll also find us cutting some sort of flatbread or pizza into small squares — our friends would adore this California Pizza with Sourdough Crust.

Start Your Day with Avocados for Breakfast

Go light and make an Avocado and Cucumber Smoothie or really treat yourself with this Skillet Huevos — We would be happy to eat it everyday.

Avocado Loving Sandwiches and Burgers

Adding a few slices of avocado to sandwiches and burger never hurt anyone, right? We just love this Mexican Grilled Cheese — I mean, come on. Cheese and avocado.

Creamy avocado cools the heat from poblano peppers in this Poblano Avocado Turkey Burger and it’s a star in this Gluten Free BLT (along with bacon, lettuce and tomato, of course). By the way, the sandwich is gluten free because the bun has been replaced by potato slices (genius).

Pasta and Avocado

One of our most popular recipes is our Avocado Pasta Recipe — it takes just about 10 minutes and is so delicious.

We weren’t the only one’s to add avocado to our pasta, though. We love this Shrimp and Avocado Pasta (gosh it looks good). Or, try making Avocado Mac and Cheese.

Cheer Up Fish, Beef and Chicken

Weekday meals can often become boring — avocados can help with that. Try adding a Mango-Avocado Salsa to fish, or slices of ripe avocado to Shredded Beef Tacos. You could even turn regular chicken enchiladas into Avocado Chicken Enchiladas by making a creamy avocado sauce. Yum.

How to Choose, Cut and Store Avocados

Inspired to use avocados? Just in case you’re were curious, here’s a mini post all about buying, cutting and storing them —How to Prepare and Store Avocado.