Shoney's

Menu Description: "Vanilla ice cream between two pieces of devil's food cake. Served with hot fudge, creamy topping and a cherry."

One of Shoney's signature dessert items is this Hot Fudge Cake, an ice cream fudge cake dessert worshipped by all who taste it. To make construction of this treat simple, my Shoney's Hot Fudge Cake recipe calls for a prepackaged devil's food cake mix found in any supermarket baking aisle. Try to find vanilla ice cream in a box, so that the ice cream can be more easily sliced to fit on the cake. Leftovers can be frozen and served up to several weeks later.

You've got dessert down, how about Shoney's pot roast, or country fried steak as the main dish?

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Tender steak, lightly breaded and golden fried. Smothered with country milk gravy." 

Alex Schoenbaum opened the doors to his first restaurant, Parkette, a drive-in in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1947, at the start of a boom in popularity of the classic American drive-in restaurants many of us know only from reruns of Happy Days. Schoenbaum's restaurant did very well and he decided, in 1951, to purchase a Big Boy franchise, the fastest growing chain at the time. In 1953, Parkette changed its name to Shoney's Big Boy.

Today Shoney's is no longer affiliated with Big Boy, but maintains a menu that features the Southern homestyle favorites that have made it so successful for so long. One of the old-time favorites is the Country Fried Steak smothered in peppered milk gravy. The technique here is to freeze the steaks after they have been breaded with flour. This way the coating won't wash off when the steaks are fried—the same technique the restaurants use.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Tender roast beef and carrots slow-simmered and served in a rich brown gravy."

Remember Mom's delicious pot roast? Shoney's tender slow cooked entrée is just as good, if not better, than many home recipes. The secret to making tender, flaky pot roast is the long slow-cooking process with frequent basting. My Shoney's Pot Roast copycat recipe requires 3 to 4 hours of cooking to make the meat tender. The meat is then flaked apart, put back into the pot with the pan juices and carrots, and cooked more to infuse the meat with flavor. I used rump roast in my recipe, a tough cut of meat that gets tender as it braises. If you like, you can use the more tender and less costly chuck roast. The chuck may take up an hour less time in the oven to tenderize due to its higher fat content.

Complete your meal with my copycat recipe for Olive Garden Mashed Potatoes. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

If you've ever laid your fork into one of these, you know how tough it is to take just one bite. Now you don't worry about stopping there. TSR drastically reduces the fat in this clone of the Shoney's creation with the help of reduced-fat devil's food cake mix and fat-free ice cream. Just be sure to get the type of ice cream that comes in a rectangular container, so that slicing and arranging the ice cream on the cake is make easier. Breyer's makes excellent fat-free vanilla ice cream and the container works well for this recipe. You may have some ice cream left over, which you can eat with the small cake or cupcakes you can bake with the cup of leftover cake batter.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 slice
Total servings–12
Calories per serving–328 (Original–522)
Fat per serving–9.5g (Original–20g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

Despite the name this TSR reduced-fat version of one of Shoney's most popular country-style items is not fried. If it were, it surely wouldn't have nearly one-fourth the fat of the original, which you can order at any of the 900 restaurants in this mostly Southern U.S. chain. But you'll swear this version tastes like the original, because we still bread the steak, and then spray it with a light coating of cooking spray. Once it's baked, then broiled to a golden brown, the steak is smothered with low-fat gravy. Use these low-fat cooking tricks to make a country steak that's just as good as the fried version.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 steak
Total servings–4
Calories per serving–260 (Original–563)
Fat per serving–10g (Original–37g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.