Brand-Name Recipes

In 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.

I 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.

Founded in 1914 by Harry Brown and J.C. Haley in Tacoma, Washington, the Brown and Haley Candy Company is one of the oldest confectioners in the country. In 1923 the company hit the jackpot when Harry Brown and the former cook from what would eventually become the Mars candy company, created a chocolate-coated butter toffee candy, sprinkled with California almonds. They took the sweet to Tacoma's head librarian, and she named it Almond Roca—roca means "rock" in Spanish. In 1927 the two men decided to wrap the little candies in imported gold foil and pack them into the now-familiar pink cans to extend their shelf life threefold. In fact, because of the way the candy was packaged, it was carried by troops in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War.

The Brown and Haley candy company is still housed in the former shoe factory that it has occupied since 1919. Almond Roca is so popular today that it can be found in sixty-four countries and is a market leader in Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan. The company sells more than 5 million pounds of Almond Roca each year and is the United States leading exporter of packaged confections. 

Try my Almond Roca recipe below to enjoy this special treat at home. Click here for more of my copycat recipes of famous candy.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The redesigned Kahlua Coffee Liqueur labels now says "Rum and Coffee Liqueur," which is a helpful description when creating a clone version of the famous cordial. This text was not on the bottle 30 years ago when I made my first version of this liqueur using vodka—not rum. So, back into the lab went I, to create an improved version of the drink with rum, just like the label says.

I used light rum for my Kahlua recipe because it is more of a neutral taste like the vodka called for in my first version, but since it doesn't include the caramel color added to Kahlua, your drink will come out a lighter shade of brown than the real stuff. However, you can also use dark rum in this recipe, which will add other flavor notes to your finished product, plus caramel color to deepen the shade of your liqueur.  

There are many other famous drinks you can make at home! See if I cloned your favorites here. 

Back in the 1870s, in the coastal city of Malmo, Sweden, a man named Anders Pahlsson baked the first of his soon-to-be famous gingersnaps in a bakery he named Pogen's. In 1970 Pogen's, Inc., opened in the United States, expanding the line of baked goods that Pahlsson developed in the nineteenth century.

A legend that dates back many years says that if you place a gingersnap in the palm of your hand, press down in the middle, and it breaks into three pieces, good luck will follow. Today, more than 100 years later, good luck and hard work have made Pogen's the third-largest supplier of cookies to the growing vending business. 

Use my Pogen's gingersnap recipe below to enjoy these famous crunchy cookies at home, and find more iconic cookie recipes here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The 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.

For 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.

Here'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.

While 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.

When making cookies for the holidays, why not make the best? Use my Pepperidge Farm's Ginger Man cookies recipe to add a sweet gingery crunch to the seasonal festivities.

Click here for more fun, copycat cookies and brownies.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Need 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.

Bailey'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.

Cranberries, 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.

You'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.

My Kraft Stove Top Stuffing copycat recipe duplicates the common 6-ounce box of stuffing mix you find in any grocery store. This secret formula duplicates the chicken variety, the brand's most popular version. It's nice to be able to make as much of this as you want prior to the holiday crunch, and just keep it sealed up in the pantry until you're ready to use it. You have enough to worry about, like deciding which fruits to use in the Jell-O mold. When it's time to cook, it's just a matter of adding some water and margarine, and in 10 easy minutes this stuff is all ready to go.

Check out my copycat recipes for other Kraft favorites here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Rather than trying to beat the competitors—especially if they have an exceptional product—Mrs. Fields Famous Brands throws cash at 'em. With the acquisition of Great American Cookies in 1998 by the company that made chewy mall cookies big business, Mrs. Fields is now peddling her baked wares in more than 90 percent of the premier shopping malls in the United States. That's how you make some serious dough. 

One of the all-time favorite cookies you can grab at any of the 364 Great American Cookies outlets is the classic snickerdoodle. Rolled in cinnamon and sugar, it's soft and chewy and will seem to be undercooked when you take it out of the oven. When it cools, it should be gooey, yet firm in the middle. Just a couple bites should make you wonder: "Got milk?!" 

Try my Great American Snickerdoodles recipe below, and check out my recipe for Great American White Chunk Macadamia cookies here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

In 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.

At his candy factory In York, Pennsylvania, in the late 1930s, Henry C. Kessler first concocted this minty confection. The York Cone Company was originally established to make ice cream cones, but by the end of World War II the peppermint patty had become so popular that the company discontinued all other products. In 1972 the company was sold to Peter Paul, manufacturers of Almond Joy and Mounds. Cadbury USA purchased the firm in 1978, and in 1988 the York Peppermint Pattie became the property of Hershey USA.

Other chocolate-covered peppermints were manufactured before the York Peppermint Pattie came on the market, but Kessler's version was firm and crisp, while the competition was soft and gummy. One former employee and York resident remembered the final test the patty went through before it left the factory. "It was a snap test. If the candy didn't break clean in the middle, it was a second." For years, seconds were sold to visitors at the plant for fifty cents a pound.

Try my York Peppermint Pattie recipe below, and find more of my famous candy recipes here. 

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Let'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.

The 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.

Kahlua 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. 

The 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. 

Getting 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.

My 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.