California Pizza Kitchen
Welcome! You just found recipes for all your favorite famous foods! Bestselling author and TV Host Todd Wilbur shows you how to easily duplicate the taste of iconic dishes and treats at home for less money than eating out. Todd’s recipes are easy to follow and fun to make! Find your favorite copycat recipes from California Pizza Kitchen here. New recipes added every week.
- American Coney Island
- Applebee's
- Arby's
- Auntie Anne's
- Bahama Breeze
- Baja Fresh
- Barney's Beanery
- Baskin-Robbins
- Benihana
- Bennigan's
- Big Boy
- BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse
- Bob Evans
- Bojangles'
- Bonchon
- Bonefish Grill
- Boston Market
- Buca di Beppo
- Buffalo Wild Wings
- Burger King
- California Pizza Kitchen
- Capital Grille
- Carl's Jr.
- Carnegie Deli
- Carrabba's
- Cheeseburger in Paradise
- Cheesecake Factory
- Cheddar's
- Chevys
- Chi-Chi's
- Chick-fil-A
- Chili's
- Chipotle
- Cinnabon
- Claim Jumper
- Cracker Barrel
- Dairy Queen
- Del Taco
- Denny's
- Dive!
- Domino's
- DoubleTree
- Dunkin' Donuts
- Einstein Bros. Bagels
- El Pollo Loco
- Emeril's
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Got one of those cool hand blenders? It comes in handy for this recipe, which requires the split peas to be smashed into a smooth consistency, just like the original. If you don't have a hand blender, also called a stick blender, a standard blender works just fine. This soup is very tasty and very low in fat. And the barley gives it a special chunky texture and nutty flavor that isn't found in most pea soups.
Nutrition Facts
Serving size–2 cups
Total servings–4
Calories per serving–450
Fat per serving–3gSource: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Menu Description: "With grilled chicken breast marinated in lime and herbs, Southwestern black beans, fire-roasted mild chilis, sweet white onions and Cheddar cheese. Served with green tomatillo salsa and sour cream."
Menu Description: "With grilled chicken breast marinated in lime and herbs, Southwestern black beans, fire-roasted mild chilis, sweet white onions and Cheddar cheese. Served with green tomatillo salsa and sour cream."
California Pizza Kitchen uses imported Italian wood-fired ovens to bake the specialty pizzas. These ovens reach temperatures over 800 degrees F, allowing the pizzas to cook in just three minutes. This technique keeps ingredients from drying out so that the pizzas don't require as much cheese as in traditional recipes.
Unfortunately, most of us don't have wood-burning pizza ovens in our kitchens so I have designed these recipes to work in a conventional oven with a minimum of cheese. If you have a pizza stone, use it. If you have a hard time finding tomatillos (they look like small green tomatoes with a thin papery skin and are found in the produce section) you can use canned green salsa.
You have the option of using a store-bought crust or instant pizza dough, but I can't say enough about making the dough yourself from the recipe here. You just have to plan ahead, making the dough one day before you plan to bake the pizza. This way the dough will get to rest and will rise slowly in the refrigerator—a great technique the pros use.
Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur. -
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Who needs meat when you can make a pizza taste like this without it? It's grilled veggies and mozzarella cheese stacked on a great clone for the chain's tasty honey-wheat dough. With regular mozzarella cheese, the total fat for three slices comes in at around nineteen grams, which is still much less than you'd get from, say, the pepperoni-topped variety tipping the scales at about fifteen grams per slice. Just remember to prepare your dough a day before you plan to make the pizza. This way you'll get the best consistency in the final product. And one heck of a better clone.
Nutrition Facts
Serving size–3 slices
Total servings–2
Calories per serving–632
Fat per serving–19gSource: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Menu Description: "Introduced in our first restaurant in 1985. With barbecued chicken, sliced red onion, cilantro, and smoked Gouda cheese."
In 1985, attorneys Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield traded in their private practice, which included defending mob bosses and union officials, for a specialty pizza chain. These two "amateur chefs" say they were influenced by Wolfgang Puck, whose Spago restaurant in Los Angeles was the first to create pizza with unusual toppings. Now they have developed a niche somewhere between gourmet food and traditional Italian-style pizzas, creating what one magazine described as "designer pizza at off-the-rack prices." In addition to the pastas, soups, and salads, California Pizza Kitchen offers dozens of unique pizza creations that reflect the current trends in dining. When Cajun food was in style, the Cajun chicken pizza was a top seller; today that item has been replaced with Southwestern and Thai pizza varieties. As the menu explains, the Barbecued Chicken Pizza was one of the first pizzas served at California Pizza Kitchen. Decades later it remains one of the top-selling pizza creations.
You can use this CPK BBQ chicken pizza recipe to make your pizza with pre-made or packaged dough, but I highly recommend taking the time to make the dough yourself. You'll find that it's well worth the little bit of extra work.Click here to see if I cloned your favorite salads and appetizers from CPK.
Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur. -
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When PepsiCo shelled out $100 million for a 67 percent share of the trendy pizza chain back in 1992, founders Lawrence Flax and Richard Rosenfield thought they had it made. Unfortunately, the company behind Pizza Hut found expanding the more upscale eatery an unfamiliar struggle. The company expanded too quickly, and as costs began to dwarf sales figures, fresh ingredients were replace with cheaper frozen products. Customers noticed and sales took a nosedive. By 1996, PepsiCo decided to bail out.
The following year, PepsiCo's share of the chain was picked up by New York investment firm Rosser, Sherrill and Co. Fresh ingredients returned to the kitchens, and the size of the pizzas was increased without adjusting the price. Sales once again blossomed, and the chain was on its way back to turning its first profit since 1991.
Here's a great pizza to clone if you need to take a little time off from delicious-yet-fat-filled mozzarella cheese. With the marinated, grilled eggplant and tasty honey-wheat dough, you won't even miss that gooey white stuff. Be sure to start this one a day before you plan to eat it. The dough needs that long to rise in the fridge for just the right California Pizza Kitchen-like taste.
Nutrition Facts
Serving size–3 slices
Total servings–2
Calories per serving–380
Fat per serving–8gSource: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Menu Description: "Chopped lettuce, basil, salami, chilled roast turkey breast, diced tomatoes and Mozzarella cheese tossed in our herb-mustard Parmesan vinaigrette topped with scallions."
It's the delicious herb-mustard Parmesan vinaigrette that makes this salad so good. And since freshly made dressings are way better than anything you'll buy in a store, heres a great clone for vinaigrette that you can use either on the chopped salad clone here, or on any salad you assemble with ingredients on hand. After heating up these vinaigrette ingredients for a couple minutes, let the mixture cool, and then drizzle a thin stream of olive oil into the dressing as you blend it with an electric mixer on high speed. This will create an emulsion to thicken the vinaigrette and hold all the ingredients together even as the dressing chills.
Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.
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I'm Todd Wilbur,
Chronic Food Hacker
For 30 years I've been deconstructing America's most iconic brand-name foods to make the best original clone recipes for you to use at home. Welcome to my lab.