Baking doesn't have to be scary: 15 easy recipes to fool your friends into thinking you know what you're doing

The hardest thing about this recipe is ensuring that your knife is sharp enough to slice tomatoes in aesthetically pleasing discs. This recipe, via Food, People, Places is insanely easy, and it's endlessly modifiable with your favorite tomatoes, herbs, and cheeses. After 40 minutes in the oven, you'll be rewarded with an instagram-worthy tart. The best part? The only "baking" you'll do is thaw out some pre-made puff pastry. The full recipe and video is right here.

The best thing about French toast is how easy it is to make. So why not take advantage of that ease to create a deliciously fluffy bread pudding? Ina Garten gives us this recipe, which requires about 30 seconds of hands-on work, before you let the bread soak and throw your dish in the oven. The full recipe is right here.

As previously stated, the worst thing about baking is the way that, often, batters and doughs need to be babysat for a while, poked and prodded to perfection lest your cookies come out more like hockey pucks. Most cakes, however, don't require this level of attention. This recipe, in particular, simply requires that you dump a whole bunch of ingredients into a bowl and mix. It'll taste better than the stuff from the box, and it's only slightly more time-consuming. The full recipe is here.

Speaking of baked goods that don't really take much finesse, brownies fit into that category as well. This brownie recipe is not only idiot-proof with only nine ingredients, but it also promises piping hot brownies in only 45 minutes. Step-by-step instructions can be found here.

Perhaps 45 minutes is too long to wait for an ooey-gooey chocolate dessert. Well, Lucky Peach is here to help with a recipe for the "most dangerous cake in the world". And they're not wrong – it takes less time to make this cake than it does for you to make your cold-press coffee in the morning. And you can do it in the same mug. The full recipe is here, via the beloved Lucky Peach.

Via Alex Guarnaschelli, this recipe for corn bread is incredibly simple, and endlessly modifiable. If you've never made cornbread before, you may be surprised to know that it's not made from a dough like other breads – it's closer to a pancake or brownie in that it's made from a batter. This means that all you have to do is whisk together a bunch of ingredients and throw them into a pan to create the perfect accompaniment for chili. Consider adding cheeses, hot peppers, or even fruits to augment the flavor – this cornbread can stand alone as a dessert if you prepare it accordingly. Here's the full recipe.

Wait, wait, where are you going? Oh, I see. You see that this is a bread recipe and you're already moving along, thinking that this will be a time-and-labor intensive ordeal, too difficult to be worth the trouble. Well what if I told you that this recipe doesn't involve any kneading whatsoever? As long as you have enough time to allow this bread to rise (and a couple of oven-safe bowls) you shouldn't have any trouble putting together this delicious bread. Alexandra Cooks has the full recipe.

Was that last recipe too complex for you? Well, as long as you have a rice cooker, you can put together a delicious bread using only four ingredients, using only one bowl, and without kneading. The full recipe is here, via the hilariously named Knifing Forking Spooning blog.

Okay, so maybe you don't have a rice cooker, and that's your excuse for not making bread. Bad news – you can make bread in the slow cooker. No excuses left – especially since this method of cooking works with any kind of bread dough. Simply set your cooker to high, and cook for between an hour and 2 1/2 until everything is set. And hey, if you want that deliciously crusty top, you can always pop the baked bread in the oven for a bit at the end. The Kitchn has full instructions here.

For such a refined-seeming dessert, it seems surprising that you can make shortbread with five ingredients and in two steps. This recipe from BBC Good Food can be completed in just about 45 minutes, and if you're not a fan of the lemon-ginger flavors, it's also easily adaptable. I'd suggest adding orange zest and currants, personally. The full recipe is right here.

Unlike their close cousins biscuits and croissants, scones are (relatively) fool-proof and easy pastries to make. There's no folding of dough and no odd go-by-feel technique required to determine when the dough has come together. All you have to do is mix until everything barely comes together into a wet dough, roll it out, and cut out circles. Pop it all in the oven, and you have scones in 20 minutes. The full recipe can be found right here.

Sure, it might be cheating to use lemon cake mix in this recipe, but it really does make these cookies incredibly easy to bake. you'll only need 5 ingredients, and within 10 minutes, you'll have fresh-baked cookies. The full recipe is here.

Muffins are a bit trickier than, say, scones or cookies are to make, but not by much. The only difference in making the batter is that you have to prepare the wet and dry ingredients separately, then pour the wet into the dry. If you follow this Ina Garten recipe, you'll realize how easy it all is, and you'll be rewarded with delicious blueberry muffins at the end. Here's the full recipe.

Admittedly, this one is a bit more complicated given that making the brownie batter is a multi-step process, but by this point in the slideshow, I think you're ready. Besides, the sweet-salty-savory flavors of these bars isn't something to be missed. Once again, this recipe comes from Lucky Peach. The full recipe is here.

Monkey bread is perhaps the best use you'll ever get out of that bundt cake pan that has been in your cabinet for decades and might have actually belonged to the house's previous owner since you're not really sure how it got there. Dig it out and make some monkey bread. If you buy frozen dough, this is an incredibly easy recipe that's actually pretty fun to make. The Kitchn has the full recipe right here.