Brand-Name Recipes
Re-create your favorite brand named foods with copycat recipes you won't find anywhere else from America's most trusted food hacker, Todd Wilbur. Search by brand name here. New recipes added every week.
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Sara Lee Original Cream Cheesecake
Read moreIn 1949 a bakery owner named Charles Lubin pioneered the frozen-foods business when he invented a top-quality cream-cheese cake for sale in supermarkets and restaurants. He named the cheesecake after his daughter, Sara Lee. Though skeptics believed that a frozen baked item could not be sold in large grocery stores, Lubin's cheesecake was such a success that only two years later, in 1951, he opened the Kitchens of Sara Lee and began to add other items to his line. In the early 1950s Lubin introduced the aluminum foil pan, which allowed his products to be baked, quickly frozen, and sold in the same container. Today, the Kitchens of Sara Lee produce more than 200 varieties of baked goods. And few people know that this diverse company has also been successful in manufacturing and marketing coffee, meats, and even pantyhose under the Hanes and Liz Claiborne labels.
Use my Sara Lee Cheesecake copycat recipe below to duplicate this famous cheesecake at home, and try more of my famous and fun dessert recipes here.
Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookies (TV)
Read moreI jumped at the chance to get another crack at hacking one of America's most famous chocolate chip cookies when I was faced with the challenge for my show, Top Secret Recipe. After all, this was the very first recipe I copied over twenty-five years ago, and I've learned many new tricks for replicating the famous foodstuffs since then. Getting the chance to improve on my old secret recipes with new information was a golden opportunity to craft the best Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe ever revealed. So I hopped on a plane and headed to Salt Lake City to meet with Tim Casey, president and CEO of Mrs. Fields Cookies.
Tim showed me around the flavoring labs and test kitchens of Mrs. Fields HQ. I watched cookie dough being mixed, noting the oven temperature and length of time the cookies were baked. I was also able to discover one important trick I missed in my first recipe: after the dough was portioned out onto baking sheets, it was frozen. This way, when the cookies were baked, they came out crispy on the edges and soft and gooey in the middle. It made a huge difference!
The company was understandably vague on the specifics of the proprietary vanilla and chocolate chips they use in the cookies, but I discovered through taste tests that Madagascar vanilla extract and high-quality chocolate chips such as those made by Guittard (or even Ghirardelli) are the way to go.
Mission accomplished! What follows is my much-improved re-hack of the classic recipe that started it all, and perhaps one of the best chocolate chip cookies to ever come out of your oven.
Source: Top Secret Recipes Step-by-Step by Todd Wilbur.
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See's Candies Butterscotch Lollypop
Read moreThe first See's Candy shop was opened in Los Angeles in 1921 by Charles A. See. He used his mother's candy recipes, and a picture of her at the age of seventy-one embellished every black-and-white box of chocolates. Mary See died in 1939 at the age of eighty-five, but her picture went on to become a symbol of quality and continuity. See's manufacturing plants are still located in California, but because the company will ship anywhere in the United States, See's has become a known and respected old-fashioned-style chocolatier all across the country.
In an age of automation, many companies that manufacture chocolate have resorted to automated enrobing machines to coat their chocolates. But See's workers still hand-dip much of their candy.
One of the company's most popular sweets isn't dipped at all. It's a hard, rectangular lollipop that comes in chocolate, peanut butter and butterscotch flavors. The latter, which tastes like caramel, is the most popular flavor of the three, and my See's Candies butterscotch lollipop recipe will enable you to clone the original, invented more than fifty years ago. You will need twelve shot glasses, espresso cups, or sake cups for molds, twelve lollipop sticks or popsicle sticks.Fans of the cinnamon lollipop will love my See's Cinnamon Lollypop recipe here.
Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Disaronno Amaretto
Read moreFor several months, artist Bernardino Luini worked closely with a model to help him paint a fresco of the Madonna in Saronno, Italy. As the months passed, the girl, whose name has since been forgotten, fell in love with Bernardino. To show her feelings for him, the girl gave Bernardino a gift of sweet almond-flavored liqueur she made from the trees growing in her garden. The year was 1525, and that bottle is said to have been the first Disaronno Amaretto. The recipe was passed down through the ages, until late in the eighteenth century, when the liqueur went into commercial production.
Use my Disaronno Amaretto recipe below and give someone a bottle, whether they paint you on a wall or not.You can make other liqueurs at home using my copycat drink recipes, including Bailey's, Kahlua, and Grand Marnier.
Source: Top Secret Recipes: Sodas, Smoothies, Spirits & Shakes by Todd Wilbur.
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Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookies 1993
Read moreHere's the first Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookie copycat recipe I created for the first Top Secret Recipes book back in 1987. Inspired by a bogus chain-letter cookie recipe, this is my version of the delicious Mrs. Fields cookies that are crispy around the edge and chewy in the middle. Be careful not to cook these too long. I know it becomes tempting to keep cooking these—they don't seem to be done after 10 minutes—but they will continue to cook for awhile after you take them out of the oven, and when cool, will be chewy in the middle.
You might also want to try my improved Mrs. Fields cookie recipe that I created with the secrets I learned at Mrs. Fields HQ.
Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Cliff and Buster Coconut Macaroons
Read moreWhile passing these out to each giddy audience member on her 2003 "Favorite Things" show, Oprah gushed, "Isn't that the best macaroon you've ever had?" The recipe for these delicious yet easy-to-clone coconut macaroons was passed down to Cliff Barsevich years ago from his grandmother, and they were served at the events serviced by Cliff and partner Ron Strles' catering business. When customers continued to rave about the cookies, the duo began selling the macaroons by the box in high-end stores such as Neiman Marcus. With a lot of help from The Oprah Winfrey Show, the cookies have become a huge success.
Still, at 15 bucks a dozen, it's nice to have a clone that will satisfy your macaroon munchies at a fraction of the cost. My Cliff and Buster Coconut Macaroon copycat recipe is the closest we'll ever get to a homemade version, since Cliff says he's never sharing the recipe. He says he's taking the secret formula with him when he dies.
Try more of my copycat recipes for your favorite famous cookies and brownies here.
Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur. -
Kraft Shake 'N Bake Original
Read moreNeed a recipe that copies Shake 'N Bake in a pinch? Use my recipe below for a quick blend of flour, corn flake crumbs, and spices that will give you the same texture and flavor of the original. You may notice the color is a bit different in this clone when compared to the real thing. That's because my Kraft Shake 'n Bake recipe doesn't include beet powder—a hard to find ingredient that lends a red/orange tint to the original. But after you sink your teeth into the chicken baked the same way as described on the Kraft Shake 'N Bake box, you'll swear it's the same stuff. When you're ready to get shaking and baking, use this breading on 2 1/2 pounds of chicken pieces or on 2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
Now, what side dish will you prepare?
Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Bailey's Original Irish Cream
Read moreBailey's uses a special process to combine two otherwise incompatible ingredients for its signature liqueur: cream and whiskey. This secret technique keeps the cream from clumping and separating from the whiskey and allows the liqueur to go for two years unrefrigerated without spoiling.
But we won't need any preparation tricks for this revised copycat recipe since we'll be storing our cloned liqueur in the refrigerator. And rather than cream, we’ll use canned evaporated milk for a sweet finished product with the taste and texture of the deliciously famous liqueur.
Below is an improved version of my Bailey's copycat recipe from More Top Secret Recipes. This update has fewer ingredients, is easier to make, and tastes more like the real thing.
Make more fun copycat cocktails and liqueurs with my recipes here.
Source: Top Secret Recipes: Sodas, Smoothies, Spirits & Shakes by Todd Wilbur.
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Mrs. Fields Cranberry White Chocolate Cookies
Read moreCranberries, white chocolate chips, walnuts, and rolled oats get together in this recreation of a cookie that's not only great for the holidays but will also turn the regular days into something special.
As with any proper Mrs. Fields cookie recipe, they will seem underdone when they come out of the oven. But when the cookies cool down, you will have a couple dozen of the sweet treats with slightly crispy edges and soft, gooey centers. Try my Mrs. Fields Cranberry White Chocolate Cookie recipe below. I think you'll be happy you did.
You might also like my very first Top Secret Recipe: Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies.
Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.
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Mrs. Fields Pumpkin Harvest Cookies
Read moreYou're not in the mood for pumpkin pie, but you want to bake something with pumpkin in it for the holidays. Give my Mrs. Fields Pumpkin Harvest Cookies recipe below a shot. You'll use pure canned pumpkin, plus there are pecans in there and chunks of white chocolate that can be chopped up from bars. Pull the cookies out when they're still soft in the middle and just slightly browned around the edges, and you'll produce 2 dozen perfectly baked pumpkin-pumped happy pucks.
Update 10/12/17: A more accurate measurement for the flour in this recipe is 14 ounces by weight. If you don't have a scale, add another 2 tablespoons to the 2 1/2 cups of flour called for in the recipe. Also, you may get better results if you bake the cookies at 325 degrees for 16 minutes, or until they are just beginning to turn light brown around the bottom edges.
Check out my other Mrs. Fields copycat recipes here.
Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.
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Grand Marnier Liqueur
Read moreIn 1880s France, oranges were quite rare and exotic. When Louis Alexandre Marnier-Lopostolle traveled to the Caribbean in search of ingredients, he came back with bitter oranges to combine with his family's fine cognac. Other orange-flavored liqueurs such as triple sec and curacao are mixed with a neutral alcohol base. Grand Marnier took it to the next level with a more complex flavor that makes it today's top-selling French liqueur.
Now you too can combine cognac with a real orange to make a home version of the tasty—and pricey—stuff. By using an inexpensive cognac that costs around 18 to 20 dollars a bottle, you can create a clone cousin of the real thing that normally sells for around 30 bucks a bottle.All you need for my Grand Marnier Liqueur copycat recipe is cognac, some sugar, an orange, and a little patience.
Try more of my copycat cocktail and liquor recipes here.
Source: Top Secret Recipes: Sodas, Smoothies, Spirits & Shakes by Todd Wilbur.
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Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Chocolate Cake Mix
Read moreLet's say you want to make some chocolate cake from one of the popular mixes that come in a box but you don't have much of a craving for propylene glycol, polyglycerol esters of fatty acids, or cellulose gum. Well, if you're making cake from a box mix, that's probably what you'll be eating. Many of those additives are what give the cake you make with Duncan Hines cake mix its deluxe moistness.
The good news is you can use my Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix recipe below, and come very close to duplicating the store-bought cake mix with very simple dry ingredients and a little shortening. By combining the dry stuff, then thoroughly mixing in the shortening, you will have a mix that is shelf-stable until you add the same wet ingredients in the same amounts required by the real thing. It's a great way to make good, old-fashioned chocolate cake without the hard-to-pronounce additives.
You can also try my Duncan Hines yellow cake mix recipe for a moist yellow cake from scratch.
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Hostess Twinkie
Read moreThe Twinkie was invented in 1930 by the late James A. Dewar, then the Chicago-area regional manager of Continental Baking Company, the parent corporation behind the Hostess trademark. At the time, Continental made "Little Short Cake Fingers" only during the six-week strawberry season, and Dewar realized that the aluminum pans in which the cakes were baked sat idle the rest of the year. He came up with the idea of injecting the little cakes with a creamy filling to make them a year-round product and decided to charge a nickel for a package of two.
But Dewar couldn't come up with a catchy name for the snack cake—that is, until he set out on a business trip to St. Louis. Along the road he saw a sign for Twinkle Toe Shoes, and the name Twinkies evolved. Sales took off, and Dewar reportedly ate two Twinkies every day for much of his life. He died in 1985.
The spongy treat has evolved into an American phenomenon. Today the Twinkie is Continental's top Hostess-line seller, with the injection machines filling as many as 52,000 every hour.You will need a spice bottle, approximately the size of a Twinkie, ten 12x14 -inch pieces of aluminum foil, a cake decorator or pastry bag, and a chopstick.
Watch Todd's video demonstration of this classic hack.
If you're a fan of Hostess powdered Donettes, or cupcakes, check out these recipes.
Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Kahlua Coffee Liqueur
Read moreKahlua may market itself as the coffee liqueur developed in Mexico, but many believe the brand originated in Turkey. Looking at the label, we can still see an Arabic archway under which a sombrero-wearing man rests. Old labels of the brand show this man wearing a turban and smoking a pipe. Even the name Kahlua is of Arabic origin. Regardless of where the drink came from, it dominates all other coffee liqueurs out there, including the very popular Tia Maria.
Here's a greatly improved Kahlua Coffee Liqueur recipe that appears in Top Secret Recipes. You'll find this recipe is easier to make, tastes better, and, just as with the first recipe, improves with age.
You might also like my recipes for Bailey's Irish Cream, Amaretto, and Grand Marnier. Find more copycat liqueur recipes here.
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Werther's Original Hard Candies
Read moreThe famous hard caramel candy created in 1903 in the German town of Werther is easy to duplicate at home as long as you’ve got a candy thermometer and some rounded silicone candy molds. Realistically, you can make these candies any shape you want (one time I made some in a gummy-bear mold!), but the best shape for hard candies is something smooth and rounded. That’s what works best for a candy designed to be sucked on, rather than chewed. Just be sure to get enough molds to hold 50 or more bite-size candies at once.
My Werther's candy recipe calls for fresh cream and butter just like the original, which was invented in Germany over 100 years ago and is now sold throughout Europe and North America.
I've hacked a lot of famous candy over the years. See if I copied your favorites here.
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Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce
Read moreGetting a table at the 123-year-old original Rao’s restaurant in New York City is next to impossible. The tables are “owned” by regulars who schedule their meals months in advance, so every table is full every night, and that’s the way it’s been for the last 38 years. The only way an outsider would get to taste the restaurant’s fresh marinara sauce is to be invited by a regular.
If that isn’t in the stars for you, you could buy a bottle of the sauce at your local market (if they even have it). It won't be fresh, and it's likely to be the most expensive sauce in the store, but it still has that great Rao's taste. An even better solution is to copy the sauce for yourself using my easy Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce copycat recipe.
The current co-owner of Rao’s, Frank Pellegrino Jr., told Bon Appetit in 2015 that the famous marinara sauce was created by his grandmother many years ago, and the sauce you buy in stores is the same recipe served in his restaurants. The ingredients are common, but correctly choosing the main ingredient—tomatoes—is important. Try to find San Marzano-style whole canned tomatoes, preferably from Italy. They are a little more expensive than typical canned tomatoes, but they will give you some great sauce.
After 30 minutes of cooking, you’ll end up with about the same amount of sauce as in a large jar of the real thing. Your version will likely be just a little bit brighter and better than the bottled stuff, thanks to the fresh ingredients. But now you can eat it anytime you want, with no reservations, at a table you own.
This recipe was our #1 most popular in 2020. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Olive Garden Lasagna Classico (#2), King's Hawaiian Original Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (#3), Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken (#4), Chipotle Mexican Grill Carnitas (#5).
Check out this list of our most popular recipes of all-time.
You might also like my recipes for Rao's Bolognese sauce and Rao's Meatballs here.
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Popcornopolis Caramel Corn
Read moreMy new favorite caramel corn is from Popcornopolis. Its caramel coating is lighter in color and flavor than the dark molasses-heavy caramel coating on old-school caramel corn, like Cracker Jack. The flavor is more buttery, like butter toffee, with just a hint of molasses knocking at the back door.
To create my Popcornopolis caramel corn recipe I worked with several versions of butter toffee candy, adding light brown sugar to bring in the molasses, and after several attempts finally landed on just the right combination of ingredients to best duplicate the flavor, color, and texture of the real thing.
You'll want a candy thermometer for this recipe for the best results, but if you don't have one you can estimate when the candy is done by using the time cue in the steps.
Vanilla is added at the end, so we don't cook out the flavor. You'll also add a little baking soda at the end, which will react with the acid in the molasses and create tiny air bubbles so the hardened candy has a more tender bite to it.
Check out our other candied popcorn clone recipes including Cracker Jack, Poppycock, Fiddle Faddle, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and Crunch 'n Munch.
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King's Hawaiian Original Hawaiian Sweet Rolls
Read moreA recipe for Portuguese sweet bread inspired the soft rolls that became a big hit at Robert Tiara's Bakery & Restaurant in Honolulu, Hawaii in the 1950s. It wasn’t long before Robert changed the name of his thriving business to King’s Hawaiian, and in 1977 the company opened its first bakery on the mainland, in Torrance, California, to make the now-famous island sweet rolls sold in stores across the U.S.
King’s Hawaiian Rolls are similar to Texas Roadhouse Rolls in that they are both pillowy, sweet white rolls, so it made sense to dig out my Texas Roadhouse Rolls clone recipe and use it as a starting point. These new rolls had to be slightly softer and sweeter, so I made some adjustments and added a little egg for color. And by baking the dough in a high-rimmed baking pan with 24 dough balls placed snugly together, I ended up with beautiful rolls that rose nicely to the occasion, forming a tear-apart loaf just like the original King's Hawaiian Rolls, but with clean ingredients, and without the dough conditioners found in the packaged rolls.
Use my King's Hawaiian Sweet Rolls copycat recipe for sandwiches, sliders, or simply warmed up and slathered with soft European butter.
This recipe was our #3 most popular in 2020. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce (#1), Olive Garden Lasagna Classico (#2), Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken (#4), Chipotle Mexican Grill Carnitas (#5).
Check out this list of our most popular recipes of all-time.
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Ferrara Butterfinger
Read moreBreak open a milk chocolate-coated Butterfinger candy bar and you’ll see flakey layers of candy inside, and it may not seem possible to duplicate that mysterious peanuty center at home without some sort of special equipment. But considering that candy bars as old as this usually start as a hand-made recipe, I figured there must be a way to craft a Butterfinger clone in your own kitchen from scratch.
Ownership of Butterfinger has changed hands a few times since Otto Schnering invented it in 1923 for his Illinois candy company, Curtiss. Standard Brands bought Curtiss in 1964, and then Nabisco merged with Standard Brands in 1981. Nestle purchased Butterfinger from Nabisco in 1990, then later sold it to Italian candy company Ferrara in 2018. Ferrara claims to have “improved” the formula in 2019 by removing preservatives, adding more cocoa to the chocolate, using better peanuts, plus a few other tweaks. And this is where the controversy starts. Posts on Butterfinger’s social media pages complain that the new Ferrara formula is not as good as the Nestle version, that it leaves a bad aftertaste, and that they should immediately bring back the old recipe.
The new label has fewer ingredients than the old label, but one omission that stood out was the removal of corn flakes. Corn flakes had been used in the Butterfinger recipe since the ‘50s, and that’s the Butterfinger most of us grew up on. Is a lack of corn flakes the reason why some Butterfinger fans don’t like the new recipe? I’m not sure if that’s all there is to it, but for this hack, I decided to go old-school and put the corn flakes back in the bar. The corn flakes need to be crushed before adding them to the candy, and you can easily do that by putting them in a small plastic bag and whacking on it with a rolling pin.
For the flakiness of the candy, we’ll use a laminating technique that creates layers in the bar, similar to laminating dough. But unlike dough where you can take your time, you’ll have to work quickly here to make as many layers as possible before it cools, which will be just a couple of minutes. Peanut butter is first spread over the candy, then it’s folded with a silicone spatula, flattened, and folded again, and again. When the candy begins to harden, it’s trimmed into bars, cooled, and dipped into milk chocolate.
Try my Butterfinger copycat recipe below, and find more of your favorite candy recipes here.
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Walker's Shortbread
Read moreJoseph Walker used only the best ingredients to make the famous pure butter shortbread recipe he created in 1898 at his Bakery in Aberlour, Scotland. More than a century later Walker's is one of the bestselling shortbreads in the world and it’s still made with the same four quality ingredients: flour, butter, sugar, and salt.
But just knowing the ingredients still leaves you a long trip away from great shortbread—a fact that’s best confirmed by giving any other copycat recipe a try. If a recipe calls for all-purpose flour and/or standard granulated sugar and salt, you’re destined for disappointment.
The secret ingredient in a perfect Walker's Shortbread cookie is pastry flour. It has less gluten than all-purpose flour and will produce a tender bite mirroring the original cookies, but it still provides a stable structure that won’t spread out when baked. My favorite pastry flour is Bob’s Red Mill.
There is no leavening in these cookies (that’s why they're called shortbread), so the sugar and salt are whipped into the butter until it’s fluffy which works in air bubbles that provide a lift to your shortbread when baked. Standard sugar and salt grains won’t easily dissolve in the butter, so I'm using superfine sugar here (baker’s sugar) and superfine salt (popcorn salt) to produce perfect shortbread with a clean bite that’s free of any detectable sugar or salt granules.
Try my Walker's Shortbread copycat recipe below, and click here for more great famous cookie recipes.
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Kellogg's Pop-Tarts
Read moreIt took six months for Kellogg’s product developers to figure out how to mass produce a par-baked filled pastry that could be crisped up in a home toaster. In 1964, Pop-Tarts hit grocery store shelves in four flavors: strawberry, brown sugar cinnamon, blueberry, and apple currant, and went on to become Kellogg’s top-selling brand.
I set out to make a taste-alike version of the popular snack that looks just like the original and could be cooked for a second time in a toaster. It was apparent that I would need a pastry dough that was flakey yet sturdy, and with a familiar flavor reminiscent of Pop-Tarts, and eventually, I came up with a recipe that worked.
As I completed the dough for my Kellogg's Pop-Tarts copycat recipe, I worked on the filling, developing recipes for two of the most popular flavors: strawberry and brown sugar cinnamon. The strawberry filling here requires seedless strawberry jam and the cinnamon sugar filling is a simple combination of brown sugar, cinnamon, flour, and butter—like streusel. The filling is spread on the bottom layer of dough and then a top layer of dough is added, ventilated with a toothpick or wooden skewer, and baked just until light brown.
When cool, the brown sugar cinnamon tarts are frosted with cinnamon icing, and the strawberry tarts are frosted with white icing, and then topped with sprinkles. When the icing hardens your Pop-Tarts clones are ready to be finished in a toaster for eating at your convenience, just like the real ones.
Try my Kellogg's Pop Tart copycat recipe below, and find more of your favorite breakfast copycat recipes here.
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Lofthouse Frosted Cookies
Read moreWhen Lofthouse frosted cookies were first produced from a handed-down family recipe in a makeshift bakery in the back of a Utah garage in 1994, it's likely the ingredients were different than they are in the mass-produced product found in markets across the country today. To maintain a long shelf-life, it's common for baked goods to be manufactured with nondairy substitutes, so butter is often replaced with hydrogenated oil and butter flavoring (otherwise known as margarine), and various vegetable gums and preservatives are added to improve the texture and stabilize the product.
Rather than using ingredients you find on the label of the store product, such as artificial flavoring, lecithin, cellulose gum, or carrageenan in my Lofthouse cookie recipe, we'll use real butter, fresh eggs, and vanilla extract in our clone—perhaps just as the family who created this recipe did back in the day. The big difference is that you have to be sure to eat the cookies within a few days to get that freshly baked taste and texture. Or you can freeze them so they last longer.
Cake flour is used here rather than all-purpose flour to duplicate the tender, cakey texture of the original, and sour cream is used to add in the dairy needed without over liquefying the dough (as milk would). An added benefit of sour cream is its high acidity, which activates the leavening power of the baking soda. The dough is still going to be much thinner and tackier than typical cookie dough, so chilling it for a couple of hours before portioning it out onto a baking sheet is a must to make it easier to work with.
Find more copycat recipes for your favorite famous cookies here.
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Lotus Biscoff Cookies
Read moreJan Boone first created the traditional Belgian speculoos cookies at his Lotus Bakery in Lembeke, Belgium in 1932. Spiced shortbread cookies like these are often enjoyed with a cup of coffee, so the new cookie was called Biscoff as a mashup of “biscuit” and “coffee.” The cookies didn't become popular in the U.S. until the 1990s when airlines began passing out the cookies to travelers on every trip.
Recipe authors who claim to re-create these cookies with a blend of spices that includes clove, nutmeg, and cardamom appear to be confusing speculoos cookies from Belgium with speculaas cookies from the Netherlands. Many spices were too costly to import to Belgium at that time, so speculoos cookies were often made with just cinnamon, while the Dutch version got the more expensive blend of exotic spices.
Biscoff cookies are called “caramelized cookies” because they’re made with Belgian blonde candy sugar (bruen leger), which is granulated sugar that has been lightly caramelized. This ingredient contributes a unique taste to the cookies that is slightly different from cookies made with American brown sugar, which contains molasses. You can find brun leger online or make it yourself with white sugar in your oven using the tips here. If you'd rather not fuss with that, you can substitute with domestic light brown sugar.
Finish my Lotus Biscoff Cookies copycat recipe by slicing the rolled dough with a fluted pastry wheel to make fancy edges like the real thing, and you’ll have around 3 dozen of the classic European cookies that will fit nicely on one half-sheet pan for baking. I’m calling for all-purpose flour here, but if you want more tender, melt-in-your-mouth cookies, use fine pastry flour.
Find more of your favorite famous cookie copycat recipes here.
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See's Candies Cinnamon Lollypop
Read moreCharles See had a vision. His mother's chocolates were so good, he knew deep down that a candy store featuring Mary See's sweet creations would be a huge success, and he was right. The first See's Candies opened in Los Angeles, California in 1921, over 100 years ago, and today there are more than 200 See's Candies stores in 21 states.
Chocolate-covered candies are the chain's signature items, but See's is also known for the creamy rectangular lollipops that come in a variety of flavors, including caramel, vanilla, chocolate, and butterscotch. Around the holidays, sales spike for the red one: a cinnamon oil-flavored lollipop with a smooth mouthfeel. Like the other See's Lollypop recipes, this one includes butter, cream, and brown sugar, giving it a pleasant butter toffee quality.
The trick here was finding a way to make these into rectangular suckers like the real ones without access to a lollipop mold for that shape. Fortunately, I found an ice cube tray online with perfectly-sized molds and a flexible silicone base to aid in release. With a few little tweaks, I transformed the $4 ice cube tray into a mold that can be used over and over to make 14 rectangular lollipops that look and taste just like See's. I've included that cool little trick here in my See's Cinnamon Lollypop copycat recipe, plus plenty of step photos, so yours will always come out perfect.
Try my version of See's Candies Butterscotch Lollypop here.
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Grey Goose Honey Deuce
Read moreThis quenching combination of Grey Goose vodka, fresh lemonade, and Chambord raspberry liqueur was invented in 2007 by Grey Goose ambassador and restauranteur Nick Mautone for the vodka sponsorship deal struck with the U.S. Open Tennis Championships. Nick came up with a drink made with the refreshing flavor of raspberry lemonade, and the cocktail stick with three frozen honeydew melon balls resembling tennis balls was his perfectly inspired garnish.
The popularity of the summer concoction at the U.S. Open peaked in 2023 when 460,275 Honey Deuces were sold in commemorative cups for $22 each. Sales of the drink that year reached over $10 million, and at the 2024 tournament, with an upped $23 price tag, sales are expected to be even higher.
I designed my custom version of the Grey Goose Honey Deuce recipe for a 16-ounce glass, so I retooled the recipe shared by Grey Goose, which is measured to fit in a 12-ounce highball glass. Also, their recipe doesn’t mention how to make good lemonade, so I devised an easy formula that will give you 16 ounces of lemonade, which will be enough for four cocktails.
Before making your drinks, use a melon baller to make honeydew melon balls. Pierce three on a cocktail stick for each drink you plan to make and freeze them for about an hour. Your serve.
Find more of my famous drink copycat recipes here.
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Vlasic Bread & Butter Pickle Chips
Read moreCroatian immigrant Joseph Vlasic moved to America in 1912 and built a creamery in Detroit, Michigan, to make cheese. His business grew, and during World War II, Vlasic began producing pickles, which were a huge success. He created Vlasic Foods in 1957 and passed it down to his son Bob in 1960, who then sold it to the Campbell Soup Company in 1978 for $33 million.
One of Vlasic’s most popular pickles in grocery stores across America is the sweet-and-sour slices, often eaten straight out of the jar or used on sandwiches and burgers. For my Vlasic Bread & Butter Chips copycat recipe, I used Persian cucumbers, which have thin skin and a mild taste that works perfectly here. You’ll need eight of them.
The Vlasic pickles are sweetened with corn syrup, but I opted for organic agave syrup and the recipe worked great. The rest of the brine is a simple combination of white wine vinegar, mustard seeds, celery seeds, onion, and garlic. Just a touch of turmeric adds the perfect light yellow tint.
The real thing contains calcium chloride to keep the pickles crispy, so I included it in this recipe if you’d like to add it. You can find this ingredient online—one brand is Pickle Crisp—and you’ll need 1/8 teaspoon per 16-ounce jar.
Try my Vlasic Bread & Butter pickle chips copycat recipe below as a snack or on one of my copycat sandwich recipes here.
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Old El Paso Taco Seasoning Mix
Read moreThe Old El Paso brand started life in 1917 as The Mountain Pass Canning Company, but the name changed when the company was sold to its new owner in El Paso, Texas. The company initially specialized in canned tomatoes and pinto beans but expanded its line over the years. In 1969, Old El Paso became the first American company to sell a national line of Mexican meals in supermarkets and the first to advertise Mexican food. This growing market for Mexican cuisine established by Old El Paso is why U.S. stores created a Mexican food section for the first time in 1970.
Many of us who grew up with "family taco night" are familiar with the packet of spices added to browned ground beef for a quick and easy taco filling. When the seasoned beef is added to crispy or soft taco shells with your favorite combination of cheese, lettuce, tomato, avocado, or whatever, any day becomes Taco Tuesday.
My Old El Paso Taco Seasoning Mix copycat recipe includes all the spices you'll need for a perfect match to the real thing and just the right amount of cornstarch to thicken it up. And it's a cinch to make. Once you've mixed these ingredients in a small bowl, add the blend to 1 pound of cooked ground beef with water, cook until thick, and fill your tacos just like you did with the original from back in the day.
Now, how about a cold margarita?
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Manwich Original Sloppy Joe Sandwich
Read moreLoose meat sandwiches were born in Iowa in 1926 when Maid-Rite started selling burgers made with ground beef that isn’t pressed into patties. These sandwiches became a Midwest phenomenon, and they were often served with a spoon to scoop up the loose meat that would inevitably fall out. This dry and crumbly characteristic of the loose meat sandwich might be why, in 1930, a chef named Joe, as legend has it, created a tomato-based sauce, possibly with ketchup, which he mixed into the loose ground beef. Joe’s new sandwich had more flavor than its drier cousin, and the loose meat stayed in the bun.
Sloppy Joes became a common restaurant and diner menu choice for decades, with sandwiches selling for as little as 10 cents. In 1969, Hunts brought Sloppy Joes home with the introduction of the first canned Sloppy Joe sauce. When added to one pound of browned ground beef, the sauce made enough filling to feed a family of four. It was easy, and it was cheap.
The original sauce lists corn syrup as the second ingredient, but for my Manwich Sloppy Joe Sauce copycat recipe, I chose to avoid corn syrup and even ketchup and instead built the sauce with ketchup ingredients, including tomato paste, sugar, vinegar, and spices. Like the real thing, my version is easy and cheap, but because it’s fresher, it tastes a little better.
Find more of my copycat recipes for iconic sandwiches here.
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Crumbl Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunk Cookie
Read moreTo ensure success for their new cookie store, cousins Sawyer Hemsley and Jason McGowan knew they had to start with a great cookie recipe. Batch after batch, the partners baked milk chocolate chip cookies and shared them with taste testers for helpful advice on improving the recipe until, finally, they had created the very best cookie. In 2017, the cousins opened their first Crumbl cookie store in Logan, Utah to sell their new milk chocolate chip cookies. Just 7 years and over 200 cookie recipes later, Crumbl had grown to over 900 stores throughout the U.S. and Canada, and the chain now sells over 1 million cookies a day. Each week, the rotating menu features 6 cookie flavors, but a few special cookies, like this classic Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunk Cookie are almost always on the roster due to their popularity.
To create my Crumbl Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunk Cookie copycat recipe, I started with the cookie chain’s list of ingredients. I designed a recipe using that information and then systematically tweaked the formula through more than 35 batches, making minor adjustments each time. Through that process, I discovered the best ratio of brown sugar to white sugar, and I found that baking the cookies at a higher temperature worked best for crispy edges and chewy middles. I also found that one egg isn’t enough, and two eggs are too much, so beating two eggs and measuring ¼ cup after the foam settled was the best method for consistent results.
Crumbl uses a large scoop to portion these cookies, but you can also use your hands to form the dough into mounds with rough tops. Be sure to bake the cookies on parchment paper. I found silicone baking mats too slippery, causing the cookies to spread from the bottom and split. Also, don’t wander too far from the oven. Your cookies are done when they’re light brown around the edges and still appear uncooked in the center, so keep at least one eye on them.
This was my #3 most popular recipe of 2024. Check out the other most popular recipes of the year: Old Spaghetti Factory Rich Meat Sauce (#1), Cracker Barrel Country Fried Steak (#2), Cheesecake Factory Steak Diane (#4), Portillo's Chocolate Cake (#5).
Check out this list of our most popular recipes of all-time.
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Charms Blow Pop
Read moreThe fruity lollipop with gum inside is Charms' bestselling product, but the cool combo candy was the brainchild of a different candy company. Thomas T. Tidwell of Triple T Co. invented and patented his method for encasing gum inside candy in the 1960s, and sold his new lollipop, Triple Treat, for a short time. In 1973, Tidwell sold the product idea to the Charms Candy Company who renamed it Blow Pop, and for over 50 years the famous pop has been enjoyed by millions of happy mouths.
I’m not privy to the details of Tidwell’s method, but I can see by the vertical seam on a real Blow Pop that it's probably made by sealing two halves of the pop together, one half with gum and one half without. I tried various silicone lollipop molds for my Charms Blow Pop copycat recipe with little success and decided instead to create a technique using half of a slightly altered cake pop mold. I first poured half of the pop into the molds, added the gum on a stick, and when it hardened I removed it, poured the other half of the candy into the mold, and added the hardened first half on top. When all was set, I had perfectly spherical pops with seams just like the original. And it didn’t seem to bother anyone that my pops were more than twice as big as the real thing.
I designed my recipe to call for 1 dram of LorAnn Oils which you can find online. The original Blow Pops come in five flavors, and I’ve got four of them for you here: cherry, grape, watermelon, and sour apple. I also made a batch of cinnamon pops just for fun and added those instructions to the Tidbits below. Real Blow Pops don’t come in cinnamon flavor, but after tasting these, you might wish they did.
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7-Eleven Salted Caramel Cookies
Read moreThe in-store freshly baked cookies 7-Eleven tested in a few select markets in 2020 were a big success, so the convenience store chain rolled out the “Baked In-Store” concept to more markets across the country—perhaps even to a 7-Eleven near you. The cookies are baked daily in a small oven and sold near the register, like the popular cookies offered at Subway, the success of which may have inspired 7-Eleven.
Just like Subway, 7-Eleven’s cookies are chewy and underbaked. They also come in chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia nut flavors, but neither is the best flavor. That honor goes to salted caramel, which has a slightly saltier dough than the other flavors and is speckled with chewy caramel bits and chopped chocolate toffee.
For my 7-Eleven Salted Caramel Cookies copycat recipe, we’ll use Kraft's handy caramel baking bits, which are a perfect match to the caramel in the real cookies, and we’ll chop up four Heath bars to make the toffee bits. If you can’t track down Kraft caramel bits, you can dice Kraft wrapped caramels into smaller bits with a sharp knife.
Just be sure to remove the cookies from the oven when they still appear underbaked in the middle. This will ensure that they are soft and chewy when they cool.
Find more of my cookie and brownie copycat recipes here.
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Nothing Bundt Cakes White Chocolate Raspberry Cake
Read moreWhile sharing a Bundt cake one day in 1997, amateur bakers and close friends Dena Tripp and Debbie Shwetz realized they could do better. After much experimentation, the duo discovered a batter that produced a moist, delicious cake, which was a huge improvement over the dense, dry cake usually associated with Bundts. But they weren’t done yet.
The next step was to decide how to best frost their new Bundt cake. Traditionally, Bundt cakes are glazed by drizzling warm icing over the top, which drips down the sides and dries there. But the pair didn’t want to use glaze. They had a cream cheese icing they thought tasted better than any glaze, but it took some time to figure out how to apply it. They eventually settled on frosting their Bundts with large piped vertical ropes, so the icing looks like it’s dripping down the outside of the cake.
To make a Bundt cake that matches the moistness and crumb of the real Nothing Bundt Cake, it’s important to start with the right flour. The cake has more bite to it than one made with only cake flour, but it isn’t as tough as one made with all-purpose flour. That’s why I settled on pastry flour, like the one from Bob’s Red Mill. Pastry flour contains more protein than cake flour, but not as much as all-purpose flour, so it works perfectly here. If you can’t find pastry flour, no need to worry. I’ve got a way for you to hack it by combining cake flour with all-purpose flour in a 2-to-1 ratio.
The raspberry puree is made from scratch using frozen raspberries and it’s swirled into the batter before the cake goes into the oven. While the cake cools you can make the cream cheese buttercream icing. Get a 1A tip, which is a wide, circular tip for a pastry bag or gun, to make ropes of icing over the top and down the sides of the cake all the way around, just like the original.
Get this recipe in my book "Top Secret Recipes Unleashed" only on Amazon here.
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Nabisco Fig Newtons
Read moreIn 1891, a baker named Charles Rosen invented a machine that inserted fig paste into seamless pastry dough and was soon mass-producing one of the first commercially baked products in America. Rosen named his creation after the nearby town of Newton, Massachusetts, and eventually sold the recipe to the Kennedy Biscuit Company, which later became Nabisco. Today Nabisco sells over 1 billion Fig Newtons each year.
It has long been my wish to create a satisfying clone of such an iconic snack, but I was never quite sure how to go about it. The fig filling needs to be sweet with a sour aftertaste, and thick like jam. The thin pastry would need to be tender, not tough, and should smoothly wrap around the figs without cracking. After a week or so of pureeing dry figs and testing pastry doughs, I finally created a Fig Newton recipe that tasted great and looked just like the original.
Since you likely don’t have a fig bar extruder in your kitchen like Charles Rosen did, we’ll use a dough folding technique to make nicely shaped bars with smooth sides, no cracks, and no visible seam. The trick is to roll out the dough on wax paper, then wrap the dough around the fig filling by lifting the wax paper up and over the filling. You can cleanly manipulate very thin dough this way, and when you flip the bar over, the seam will be hidden.
Re-hydrating the dried figs will help make them easier to puree, and the dry pectin in the mix will thicken the figs to a jammy consistency and give the filling additional tartness (citric acid is in pectin to help activate it). My Fig Newton recipe will make 48 cookies, or more than twice what you get in two 10-ounce packages of the real thing.
Get the recipe in my book "Top Secret Recipes Unleashed" only on Amazon here.
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Smucker's Chocolate Fudge Magic Shell
Read moreIt comes out of the bottle as a liquid, but within seconds of landing on a scoop of ice cream, this magical sauce becomes a solid shell of chocolate.
Learn more and get my recipe for free on my Food Hacker Blog here.
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Haribo-Gold Gummy Bears Candy
Read moreThe nearly 100-year-old candy recipe can be easily replicated with Jell-O and a few other ingredients. But it's a little bit of food science that makes this gummy candy hack different from any other.
Learn more and get my recipe for free on my Food Hacker Blog here.
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Nestle Drumstick
Read moreNot only is it possible to make a clone of Nestle's world-famous Drumstick in your home kitchen, it's also a heck of a lot of fun.
Get this recipe for free on my Food Hacker Blog here.
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Harry Potter Butterbeer
Read moreThe imaginary drink from J.K. Rowling's books became a reality when the first Wizarding World of Harry Potter appeared in 2010. Since then, many hacks for the beverage have emerged online. The only problem is, if Rowling's reported requirements for the drink are true, then almost all of those copycats recipes got something very wrong.
Learn more and get my recipe for free on my Food Hacker Blog here.
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See's Candies Chocolate Walnut Fudge
Read moreFudge can be finicky. It's created by combining hot candy syrup with chocolate, which can result in a grainy mess if the chocolate seizes and gets clumpy. This undesirable situation can be avoided by closely monitoring the temperature, but even then your chocolate could still lock up, and your fudge will be ruined. I couldn't let that happen in my recipe re-creation of the famous fudge from the 100-year-old West Coast candy chain.
For my See's Chocolate Walnut Fudge copycat recipe, I made over 56 pounds of fudge on my quest to develop a recipe that works every time, even if the chocolate seizes. And in most of my batches, it usually did. So I came up with a secret trick: reserve a little cream for later, then after the hot candy syrup is mixed with the chocolate and the chocolate begins to seize, send the cream to the rescue and the fudge will become smooth, as if by magic.
Stir in some walnuts, then pour the fudge into a wax paper-lined pan, and when it cools, you'll have over 3 1/2 pounds of thick fudge that tastes just like the real thing. That's more than $110 of fudge if you buy it at the candy store!
Fans of the cinnamon lollipop will love my See's Cinnamon Lollypop recipe here.
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Southern Comfort Traditional Egg Nog
Read moreOnline taste tests and reviews routinely mention Farmland Fresh, Darigold, and Southern Comfort as America's best egg nog brands. And of the three, Southern Comfort, a brand famously known for fruit-flavored whiskey, often takes the top spot with its delicious “traditional” egg nog. Which, ironically, contains no booze.
But the first egg nog, invented in medieval Britain, was quite intoxicating. It was a warm drink made with milk and sherry, and thickened with plenty of egg yolks. That’s a much different beverage experience than today’s branded egg nog, often served cold. And the cartons of egg nog from your market are now made with non-traditional ingredients such as corn syrup, and much of the egg yolk has been replaced with cheaper and longer-lasting natural gums, like carrageenan and guar gum.
But, for my Southern Comfort Traditional Egg Nog copycat recipe, we'll turn back the clock and make egg nog more traditionally, with plenty of real egg yolks to thicken the batch, and no gums or corn syrup. My easy recipe will give you around 36 ounces of fresh homemade egg nog. And it’s up to you to add any booze.
Make more fun, famous drinks with my recipes here.

For over 30 years I've been deconstructing America's most iconic brand-name foods to make the best original copycat recipes for you to use at home. Welcome to my lab.
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