From Banana Bread to Mac & Cheese: The Blast Writers Feast on Celebrity-Favorite Recipes

We all know celebrities for their unforgettable roles, chart-topping hits, or show-stopping fashion. But behind the red carpet glamor, there's another hidden talent: cooking! Just like us, even the biggest stars have a go-to comfort food, a secret holiday dish, or a weeknight meal they swear by.

We asked our writers to share the celebrity recipes they can't stop making, especially the ones that are easy enough for a weeknight and delicious enough for a movie premiere. Get ready to peek behind the velvet rope and into the kitchen as we serve up the very best celebrity-approved eats!

Anyone care for some banana bread? Yes, the recipe I have chosen is TV personality and model, Chrissy Teigen’s famous banana bread recipe (with a minor tweak, cause for the life of me, I could not get my hands on one ingredient, unfortunately, so I had to find a substitute).

I chose this recipe due to my recent obsession with making banana bread. Not because I like baking, but because it’s pretty easy and makes me feel like a pro-baker, which I’m definitely not!

So, what’s my verdict? It tasted incredible and was super moist. But honestly, I feel like I may not have achieved the full potential of the recipe as I substituted Teigen’s vanilla Jello instant pudding for Greek yoghurt and vanilla extract, and then used a regular bread pan instead of a bundt pan.

However, it tasted really lovely in the end, not dry at all, and I will certainly be making it again, hopefully with a bundt pan and some vanilla pudding to see what this recipe is really giving.

For Thanksgiving afternoon snacking, I decided to make Benny Blanco’s Caprese with Roasted Red Pepper and Burrata from his new cookbook “Open Wide,” and it ended up being the MVP of the whole afternoon.

The recipe was super easy with barely any prep. (The longest part was broiling the peppers and waiting for them to cool so I could peel the skins.)

If you’re in a pinch, jarred peppers work, but fresh truly hits different, and the extra 20 minutes is so worth it. My family devoured it. We served it with toasted baguette slices and bagel chips, but honestly, you can eat it straight with a fork. It’s that good. A total 10/10.

It’s the perfect football Sunday bite, Christmas Eve lunchtime snack before dinner, New Year’s Eve midnight nosh, or really any family gathering or random lunch where you want something effortless but impressive.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a cook. I basically live at Trader Joe’s because their meals are pre-cooked, quick, and delicious. But for this year’s holiday season, I wanted to challenge myself, and our staff cook-off was the perfect opportunity.

Pictured is my very first attempt at celebrity singer and actress Patti LaBelle's mac and cheese, and I have to say, it turned out amazing. It’s cheesy, seasoned to perfection, and officially my new favorite dish. Move aside, family, because I'm coming for the Mac and Cheese crown!

Snoop Dogg can whip up more than just Gin & Juice in the kitchen! The rapper’s cookbook, “From Crook to Cook,” has many delicious recipes, ranging from staples like Baked Mac & Cheese to his riff on Lobster Thermidor. Believe it or not, he has also mastered the trick to perfecting a Thanksgiving staple.

This Thanksgiving, I decided to put Snoop Dogg’s trick to cooking a perfect turkey to the test. Snoop rubs salt into the turkey twenty-four hours before cooking and then makes an herb butter that he slides under the skin of the turkey just before cooking.

I cooked my 12-pound turkey for about two hours, let it rest for about twenty minutes before carving, and was relieved to dig into a leg of moist, flavorful turkey. Although it’s easy to overcook a turkey and compensate with excessive amounts of gravy, there was no need to do that this Thanksgiving, or for any other holiday.

When I tell people that the secret to cooking a perfect Thanksgiving turkey is to slide butter under the skin before cooking, they always ask me which celebrity chef I learned that from. Ina Garten? Gordon Ramsay? Nope. Thank Snoop Dogg.

Flecha Cantina in Las Vegas, owned by actor Mark Wahlberg, is one of my favorite celebrity-owned eateries in Sin City (and if you know anything about Vegas, it’s filled with celeb restaurants). I’ve been to Flecha multiple times since it first opened in September 2024 and have loved every single experience.

Let me walk you through a typical Flecha experience. When you walk in, they hand you a complimentary margarita (in a champagne glass, so it's really just a taste, but a decent amount). The last few times I went, it was my absolute fave: a watermelon margarita.

The ambiance is cozy and inviting, the food is delicious, and the drinks are top-tier. For me, someone who absolutely loves Mexican food over all other food, this is one of my favorite places for authentic Mexican cuisine.

The salsa is something I could literally drink; it’s so good, and the guacamole is pure perfection. And let me point out the portion sizes - they are huge. I’ve never been able to finish a quesadilla or enchilada meal there because they are oversized and so packed full of deliciousness.

I love this place so much, I’ve spent the past two Thanksgivings there. The buffet was full of traditional Thanksgiving dishes and all the Mexican cuisines Flecha is known and loved for. While I do love a good traditional Thanksgiving meal, my plate was more filled with Mexican favorites.

On any given day that you visit, if you’re lucky, you might catch celebrity star Mark Wahlberg there just hanging out. If you’re a fan of Wahlberg’s films, you’ll immediately notice the “Ted” stuffed animal in the front case when you walk in, adding a little nostalgia to your experience.

I highly recommend Flecha Cantina when visiting Las Vegas. He also has two other locations in Huntington Beach and San Diego, California. To summarize in one sentence: Flecha is affordable, delicious, authentic Mexican cuisine, and a comfortable, inviting atmosphere.

Since I've moved to Panama, I'm eating more eggs than ever! They're so fresh and delicious here, it's hard to pass them up. So, when I kept seeing José Andrés' viral ‘Two-Ingredient Microwave Omelette’ recipe circulating around the internet, I knew I had to give it a try. Andrés has labeled this as one of his ‘Top 5 Foolproof Dishes.’ The omelet actually claimed the number one spot…so let’s get into it.

You can’t get any more basic than this: One egg, one tablespoon of mayonnaise. Whisk. Microwave for one minute. Sixty seconds later, and here we are! The egg definitely fluffed up, was fully cooked, and had a creamy texture. You could taste the tangy mayo, which I wasn’t mad at, but would I make this again? Meh. I think I’ll stick to doing eggs in a pan on the stovetop, either scrambled or fried!

I recreated Elvis Presley’s iconic peanut-butter, banana, and bacon sandwich, but with a little twist of my own. The recipe itself was straightforward, of course, but would I try it again? Probably not. It’s a bold mix of flavors and textures I don’t naturally gravitate toward, and my taste buds agreed.

It's sweet, salty, crispy, creamy, all at once, which is frankly, a lot. I followed the recipe faithfully until the final step: cooking the sandwich in butter on a hot griddle. With peanut butter, banana, and bacon already doing enough heavy lifting in the “indulgent” department, adding butter genuinely felt like overkill.

So, I toasted the sandwich instead. Big mistake. Apparently, cooking on the griddle is what binds everything together. My version came out dry on the outside and almost too moist on the inside, plus I DID NOT enjoy how the banana slices completely melted into the bread.

Looking back now, I think thicker bread slices might have preserved the texture better. And if I ever attempt a remake (though I truly doubt it), I’d go for the original butter-cooked method rather than toasting.

For this month’s Blast Booster, I chose Rihanna’s Easy Mac and Cheese recipe, better known as the “Mac and Rih,” which was originally published by Esquire in 2014. I wanted something simple, comforting, and celebrity-approved, and this one checked all the boxes.

The recipe calls for elbow macaroni, white onions, red bell pepper, spring onions, ketchup, yellow mustard, Colby Jack cheese, and a Jamaican scotch bonnet pepper sauce. However, since I’m based in Lagos, Nigeria, tracking down the exact ingredients turned into its own adventure. I found most of the basics, but the specific pepper sauce and the Colby Jack cheese were nowhere in sight. So I improvised, which was very Rihanna of me. I swapped in soy sauce for the heat and used Remia blue cheese spread for the creamy factor. I also used brown onions instead of white since those were easier to find.

To start, I grated the onions, chopped the spring onions, julienned the red bell pepper, and boiled my pasta. After draining the pot (while keeping about ¼ cup of pasta water), I put everything back on low heat and stirred in the veggies until they softened.

Then came the mustard, ketchup, and soy sauce, which turned the whole pot a colorful, chaotic mix, exactly what I expected from a Rih recipe. I added the cheese spread next, stirring until it got creamy enough, then topped it with the remaining spring onions before serving it hot.

I chose this dish because it was simple and fun, and I didn’t need to hunt down overly fancy ingredients. I genuinely enjoyed making it, but since it was my first time ever trying mac and cheese, let alone Rihanna’s version, I’m not entirely sure I nailed the exact flavor profile.

Still, it was tasty and definitely something I’d try again… but next time, only if I can get the real cheese. Rih wouldn’t want me faking it twice.

Do you have a celebrity favorite recipe that we haven't mentioned here?

Let us know what dish we need to try out in the comments below!