It’s about time for Top Secret Recipes to hack one of Starbucks all-time bestselling baked snacks. For this banana bread knock-off, I settled on a blend of both baking powder and baking soda for a good crumb and dark crust that perfectly resembles the original. And I decided it best to go big on the dark brown sugar, not only for flavor but also because the extra molasses in the darker brown sugar triggers a helpful leavening boost from the baking soda. It’s also important to know that an accurate clone must have both walnuts and pecans in the mix, because that’s what’s really in it, according to the official Starbucks website ingredients info. All other copycats I saw got it wrong when it came to the nut blend, so if you want a true clone, this is the hack to bake.   

I've cloned a ton of drinks and treats from Starbucks. See if I hacked your favorite here.      

A 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, but with clean ingredients, and without the dough conditioners found in the packaged rolls.

Use these fluffy sweet rolls 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).

I never thought dinner rolls were something I could get excited about until I got my hand into the breadbasket at Texas Roadhouse. The rolls are fresh out of the oven and they hit the table when you do, so there’s no waiting to tear into a magnificently gooey sweet roll topped with soft cinnamon butter. The first bite you take will make you think of a fresh cinnamon roll, and then you can’t stop eating it. And when the first roll’s gone, you are powerless to resist grabbing for just one more. But it’s never just one more. It’s two or three more, plus a few extra to take home for tomorrow.

Discovering the secret to making rolls at home that taste as good as the real ones involved making numerous batches of dough, each one sweeter than the last (sweetened with sugar, not honey—I checked), until a very sticky batch, proofed for 2 hours, produced exactly what I was looking for. You can make the dough with a stand mixer or a handheld one, the only difference being that you must knead the dough by hand without a stand mixer. When working with the dough add a little bit of flour at a time to keep it from sticking, and just know that the dough will be less sticky and more workable after the first rise.

Roll the dough out and measure it as specified here, and after a final proofing and a quick bake—plus a generous brushing of butter on the tops—you will produce dinner rolls that look and taste just like the best rolls I’ve had at any famous American dinner chain.

This recipe was our #1 most popular in 2019. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: KFC Extra Crispy Fried Chicken (#2), Olive Garden Braised Beef Bolognese (#3), Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza (#4), Bush's Country Style Baked Beans (#5).

If you like Bojangles’ famous flakey buttermilk biscuits, then you’ve got to be a fan of the chain’s popular Bo-Berry Biscuits. Bojangles’ transforms their great top-secret buttermilk biscuit recipe into a popular dessert item by adding blueberry bits and a drizzle of sweet glaze over the top. Really good just got better.

The basic recipe here for the biscuits is the same as my clone for Bojangles’ Buttermilk Biscuits, because I wouldn’t want to change a thing. The new secrets you’ll get here are for the glaze and a handy trick for getting the dried blueberries chopped into little bits without making a sticky mess.

I suggest margarine for a fluffier final product, but you can replace the margarine with butter if you want more butter flavor in the biscuits. Just as with the plain buttermilk biscuits recipe, make sure all your ingredients are cold and your oven is very hot. And don’t overmix or overwork the dough if you want flakey, fluffy biscuits that look and taste just like the real ones.

There’s one copycat recipe for these famous biscuits that’s posted and shared more than any other, and it’s downright awful. The dough is formulated with self-rising flour, baking powder, powdered sugar, shortening, and buttermilk, and many complain that the recipe creates dough that’s much too loose and the resulting biscuits are a complete disaster. Yet there the recipe remains on blogs and boards all over the interweb for unsuspecting home cloners such as yourself to waste time on. But that won’t happen anymore, because I have made a good copycat Bojangles' buttermilk biscuits recipe that works the way it should, guaranteeing you’ll get amazing golden buttermilk biscuits that look and taste just like a trained Bojangles’ pro made them.

In addition to the obvious overuse of buttermilk, the popular recipe I found online has many problems. The author gets it right when calling for self-rising flour, which is flour containing salt and a leavening agent (aka baking powder), but why would the copycat Bojangles biscuit recipe be designed to use self-rising flour and then add additional leaving? Well, it probably wouldn’t. Biscuits are job number 1 for self-rising flour, and the leavening in there is measured for that use, so there’s no need to add more. If you were planning to add your own leavening, you’d probably start with all-purpose flour, which has no leavening in it. And let's just be clear: baking powder tastes gross, so we want to add as little as possible, not more than necessary.

It’s also important to handle the dough the same way that workers at Bojangles’ do. They make biscuits there every 20 minutes and there are plenty of YouTube videos showing the preparation technique. In a nutshell, the dough is mixed by hand (in the restaurant they use their hands because the quantity is so large, but for this recipe use a mixing spoon), then it’s folded over a few times on a floured countertop before it’s rolled out. This gentle handling of the dough prevents the gluten in the flour from toughening and adds layers, so your biscuits come out of the oven tender and flakey.

For the best results, find White Lily flour. This self-rising flour is low in gluten and makes unbelievably fluffy biscuits. If you use another self-rising brand, you’ll still get great biscuits, but the gluten level will likely be higher, the biscuits will be tougher, and you’ll probably need more buttermilk. Head down to the Tidbits below for details on that.

And I noticed another thing most copycat Bojangles biscuit recipes get wrong. For biscuits that are beautifully golden brown on the top and bottom, you’ll want to bake them on a silicone baking mat (or parchment paper) at 500 degrees F. Yes, 500 degrees. That may seem hot, but this high temp works well with self-rising flour, and in 12 to 15 minutes the biscuits will be perfectly browned.

Counterintuitively, it’s the lower temperatures that end up burning the biscuits, while the higher temperature cooks them just right. At lower temps the biscuits must stay in the oven longer to cook through, which exposes the surfaces to more heat, and they end up too dark on the outside, especially the bottom. For even better results, if you have a convection setting on your oven, use that and set the temp to 475 degrees F. Your biscuits will look like they came straight from the drive-thru.

“Biting into a cloud” is how many describe the lightly crisp browned shell and fluffy, custard-like middle of Leonard’s malasadas. Hawaii has become known for the best malasadas in North America, but the hole-less doughnuts aren’t originally from Hawaii. Malasadas were brought to the islands in the late 1800s by Portuguese immigrants who worked on the sugarcane plantations, and today malasadas are sold in bakeries all over Hawaii. But for the best malasadas, everyone knows you must brave the long lines that always go out the door at Leonard’s Bakery in Honolulu. And that’s okay because it’s always worth the wait.

Leonard’s has been making malasadas since 1952 using a well-protected secret recipe that many have unsuccessfully tried to duplicate. The chain will ship malasadas from Hawaii to your house on the mainland for a pretty hefty fee (nearly $100), but even after following strict reheating instructions, eating a two-day-old malasada is not the same heavenly experience as consuming a fresh one. A fluffy, fresh malasada turns into a tough and chewy malasada in just a few hours. That’s the nature of fried dough. It quickly became clear that if I were ever to properly clone these, I would have to experience them fresh, from the source. So, I hopped on a plane to Hawaii.

I visited two Leonard’s locations in Honolulu: the original brick-and-mortar bakery and a Leonard’s Bakery food truck parked in a shopping mall lot. I watched them make malasadas in big vats of oil, lowering dozens of doughnuts at once into the oil with a metal screen pressing down on them so that they were fully submerged in the hot fat. I observed the process, noted the temperature, watched the malasadas come out of the oil and get sugared, and timed everything.

Back home I made malasadas for weeks, using intel gathered in Hawaii. Dozens and dozens of versions later, after altering variables such as proofing methods, mixing methods, flour types, fat types, sweetness, saltiness, and many others, I landed on this one. I believe it was number 92 out of 93 attempts.

Before we start, let me offer a few tips about equipment you’ll need. It’s best to have a stand mixer. The dough starts loose but it eventually gets too tough for a handheld granny mixer. I’m sure it’s possible to mix and knead the dough by hand when it gets too tough for the little mixer, but a big mixer is much better.

Also, a deep fryer is helpful. You can fry these in a pot of oil with a thermometer if you want, but it’s so much easier to regulate temperature with a deep fryer. And you must devise a way to keep the malasadas submerged so that you won’t have to flip them, and they won’t get a white line around the middle where the dough isn’t in the oil. Deep fryers typically have a basket that you can use to put on top of the malasadas to hold them down. Rather than placing the dough in the basket when frying, carefully lower the dough into the fryer without the basket and use the basket on top of the dough to hold it under the oil. If you are frying on your stovetop, you can use a spider or strainer to hold the dough under the oil.

After the success of Panera Bread’s Cinnamon Crunch Bagels, the popular sandwich chain went back into the development kitchen and came out with these incredible scones, filled with the same crunchy cinnamon drops found in the bagels and drizzled with cinnamon icing.

When first released, these scones were cut as triangles and frosted, but in 2018 the shape was changed to more “rustic”-shaped round blobs with drizzled or piped icing on top. I like to hack the latest recipe, so the newer version of this pastry is the version I’ve re-created here.

These are cream scones, so cream is the main wet ingredient that holds the dough together—but keep the dough crumbly as you mix it, and try not to compress it much, or you risk making the final product too dense. The best way to form the scones is to use both hands and shape the dough like you’re making a loose snowball. Then use one hand to place the dough onto the baking sheet and form it into a rough dome shape. The scones will flatten and spread out a little bit as they bake.

Gerry Shreiber, a college dropout, wasn't happy with the metalworking business he had been operating for about seven years with a friend, so the two decided to sell out. Shreiber's take was about $60,000, but he needed a new job. One day he wandered into a Philadelphia waterbed store and struck up a conversation with a man who mentioned his investment in a troubled soft pretzel company called J & J soft Pretzels. Shreiber convinced the man to let him tour the rundown plant, and in 1971 he bought the company for $72,000. At the time J & J had at least ten competitors in the soft pretzel business, but over the years Shreiber devised a strategy that would eliminate this competition and help his company grow—he bought most of them out.

Today J & J Super Pretzels are uncontested in the frozen soft pretzel market, and they currently constitute about 70 percent of the soft pretzels that are sold in the country's malls, convenience stores, amusement parks, stadiums, and movie theaters.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

A great cream scone should include just enough cream to help the dough stick together, but not so much that the inside of the scone is gooey. And the perfect amount of butter is required to keep the scone from being either too tough, or too flakey, like pie crust. After two dozen attempts, I believe I’ve found the right ratios that will give you tender, nicely-browned scones with juicy blueberries buried inside—and very little blue dough from blueberry juice, just like the real thing.

I tried this recipe with every type of blueberry—fresh, frozen, dry, and rehydrated—and found that frozen worked best. After baking, these berries had the same flavor and texture as those in the original scone, so I have to assume that Panera also uses frozen berries. The secret is to first rinse and blot the berries dry before adding them to the dough. If you mix the dough properly, it should be crumbly so that you can easily integrate the juicy berries into every portion of dough. Just don’t squeeze too hard when you form the dough, or the berries may pop and you’ll be seeing blue.

Panera Bread’s product information pages refer to a long proofing time when describing the sour characteristic of the chain’s phenomenal bagels, but there is no mention of how long. After several weeks of trying different approaches to proofing these cinnamon bit–filled bagels, I decided the best solution was to form the bagels and proof them overnight in the cold. The next day the bagels came out of the refrigerator not much bigger, but after sitting for several hours at room temperature they more than doubled in size and had a light sourdough flavor like the original.

The cinnamon drops that go into the bagel were also tricky. I needed to come up with a way to make bits of cinnamon/sugar that were crunchy, but not so hard as to break a tooth. I found the best way was to make oven-cooked cinnamon candy bound with cornstarch and milk and tenderized with oil. This sugar mixture is baked in a loaf pan until no longer bubbling, then cooled and shattered into tiny pieces. When the candy is broken up, much of it gets pulverized into dust, which you separate from the crumbs with a sieve. The crumbs are the cinnamon drops used in the bagel, and the cinnamon/sugar powder is used to dust the tops of the bagels just before baking.

I also found that kettling (boiling the bagels) with just a tablespoon of sugar in the water produced a browner bagel than kettling with no sugar, so that’s the technique I’m sharing here. Some techniques call for malt in the water, but sugar works just fine and makes the perfectly shiny, blistered crust you see in the photo.

Panera Bread has amazing soups too! See if I hacked your favorite here. 

Several years ago, when this moist, lemony frosted pound cake used to be called "Lemon Loaf," it was discontinued from the coffee house chain along with the banana and pumpkin flavors, and customers were outraged. The "Loafies" (my word for them) protested and demanded that the beloved sweet loaves be returned to their rightful pastry display case, and in early 2014, the treat was brought back.

Today the Iced Lemon Loaf Cake (its new name), is made by the bakery chain La Boulange that Starbucks acquired in 2012, and it is a little different than the one I cloned years ago. So, I headed back down into the underground lab for a re-hack of this loaf cake, which will now produce a better lemon loaf that is bigger, moister, less oily, more buttery, and tastier than the previous version. If Starbucks ever ditches your Lemon Loaf again Loafies, I've got your back...right here with a hack.   

In Los Angeles in 1957, Del Johnson noticed an article in the Wall Street Journal about a successful $1.09 per steak steakhouse chain with locations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Inspired by the article, Del decided to open his own steakhouse in L.A., but with a twist that would save him money. His idea was to develop a steakhouse where customers would order their food at a food counter and pick it up when it was ready. Doesn't sound that exciting, but the concept was a hit. After the first Sizzler was open for a year, Del decided to run a two-day, one-cent anniversary sale: buy one steak at the regular price and get a second for just a penny. Del said, "We opened at 11:00. People were lined up from 11:00 until 9:00 at night, and we sold 1,050 steaks in one day and about 1,200 the second day."

With every meal, Sizzler serves a slice of tasty cheese toast. It's a simple hack recipe that goes well with just about any entrée.

Update 8/24/21: A Sizzler employees revealed that the chain uses whipped butter, mixed with grated Parmesan cheese spread onto the bread before cooking. If you use this technique or mine below, your results should be the same. 

Try more of my Sizzler copycat recipes here. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur. 

The barbecue at Jim N' Nick's is good food. But it's the irresistible mini cheese biscuits served with every meal that have become the signature specialty of this 40-store chain. The sweet little biscuits are made from scratch every day at each restaurant using the same wholesome ingredients I'm including here.

A bag of dry mix can be purchased at the restaurant, but you’re still required to add eggs, butter, cheese, and milk, so why not just make the whole thing from scratch? It's much cheaper than buying the bag of mix, and the biscuits come out better when you use fresh buttermilk rather than relying on the powdered buttermilk included in the dry mix.

Use a mini muffin pan here to make your biscuits the same size as the originals or use a standard muffin pan, if that's all you've got, for bigger muffins. It will take a little longer to cook the larger biscuits (instructions are below), but they will still turn out as addictively delicious as the famous tiny restaurant originals.

Now, what's for dinner? Find recipes your favorite entrees here.

Three things make Costco Blueberry Muffins special: they’re huge, they’re moist, and berries are bursting out of the top of each one. Now your home muffins can be just as special using a similar recipe and freshly unlocked tricks from our favorite big-box store.

Obviously, you get huge muffins by using a huge muffin pan, so you’ll need a jumbo or “Texas-size” muffin pan if you want your muffins the same size as the originals. You can certainly make standard muffins with this batter in a standard-size muffin pan, but in this case, bigger is definitely better.

To get muffins that are moist you’ll need oil. I noticed many muffin recipes use butter, but I found it made the muffins taste more like butter cake or pound cake than true muffins. Looking at the ingredients listed on the package of Kirkland muffins, you won’t find any butter in there. Just oil. For this hack, some of that oil comes from margarine (for a mild butter flavor and thicker batter), and the rest is vegetable oil.

As for the blueberries, if you add them straight into the batter the juice frozen on the outside of the berries will streak your batter blue, so be sure to rinse the berries before you add them. And to make your muffins look as irresistible as those at Costco, we’ll use another one of their tasty tricks: press 4 blueberries into the batter in each cup just before the pan goes into the oven so that every baked muffin is sure to have several tantalizing berries popping out of the top.

Good things come in small packages - just like these hit scones that have been a staple Starbucks favorite for years.

Unlike many scones that end up too dry and tasteless, these miniature scones are moist and full of great vanilla flavor. They’re deliciously sweet and creamy, with real vanilla bean in both the dough and the glaze. Want to make some great scones? Make these.

For more of my copycat Starbucks recipes, click here.

This easy muffin clone is modeled after the low-fat product found in the freezer section of your market, from one of the first brands to make low-fat food hip and tasty. Muffins are notorious for their high fat content, but in this recipe mashed banana adds flavor and moistness to the muffins to replace the fat. Now you can satisfy a muffin craving without worrying about fat grams.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Before there was Lone Star, Outback, or Ruth's Chris, a real rancher named Stuart Anderson was serving up huge cuts of delicious prime beef in his Seattle-based restaurant chain. The first Black Angus restaurant opened on April Fool's Day in 1964 and quickly became known for its huge, juicy cuts of prime rib.

Early on, Stuart Anderson's Black Angus served a signature bread dubbed "Ranch Bread" free with each meal. Around five years ago that evolved into Cheesy Garlic Bread, which is no longer free, but it is still a delicious and often requested side for any meal. Try to find a large loaf of French or Italian bread for this recipe. The recipe works with just about any type of bread loaf, but to make it more like the original, bigger is better.

Now, for your entree..how about a big 'ole juicy Whiskey Pepper Steak?

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

A good coffee house will have good coffee cake, and Starbucks is no exception. The world's biggest coffee chain offers cake that is moist and buttery, with a perfect cinnamon streusel crumb topping and a strip of cinnamon sugar through the middle. You may find slight variations of the cake at different Starbucks locations. Sometimes the cake is topped with chopped pecans and some may be dusted on top with a little powdered sugar. The homemade coffee cake recipe below clones the basic recipe, and if you want nuts on top, mix 1/2 cup of chopped pecans into the streusel topping before adding it.

What's cinnamon crumb coffee cake without coffee? Find your favorite Starbucks drink recipes here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Fresh baked on premises, sliced into eight pieces, brushed with garlic butter, Parmesan cheese, mozzarella and basil, topped with chopped plum tomatoes and herbed olive oil." 

In 1988, London-born restaurant mogul Robert Ian Earl joined with movie producer Keith Barrish and a gaggle of celebrities including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Demi Moore to start a Hollywood-themed restaurant that is on its way to becoming his most successful venture yet. In 1991, a gala star-studded affair in New York City celebrated the opening of the world's first Planet Hollywood.

But even the coolest theme restaurant won't fly if the food doesn't please. Earl told Nation's Restaurant News, "People don't eat themes—no concept in the world can succeed for long unless it also delivers great food at the right price." Planet Hollywood features a menu of delicious dishes rivaling food from national chains that don't have a theme to lean on.

The Pizza Bread appetizer comes highly recommended by Planet Hollywood servers. The "bread" is pizza dough, rolled thin, with a light layer of cheese, basil and tomato on top; then it's baked in a pizza oven at the restaurant. Since most of us don't have pizza ovens at home, this recipe has been designed for a conventional gas or electric oven.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Get the mints ready. The secret to re-creating Buca di Beppo's garlic bread starts with using the right kind of bread and lots of fresh garlic. Bakers at each restaurant start baking bread early each day, so you'll want to find a freshly baked loaf of focaccia in your market's bakery, and cut it in half through the middle using a large serrated knife. The better the foccacia, the better your garlic bread will turn out. The garlic cloves are sliced very thin using a sharp knife and a steady hand. Arrange these slices over the top of the generously buttered bread. Add shredded mozzarella first if it's that version of the garlic bread you're making. Then, just make sure you each consume at least one slice when the lightly brown garlic bread comes out of the oven so that everyone's breath is equally stinky. 

Make the uber popular Chicken Limone from Buca di Beppo with my recipe here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Here's a simple one that clones the most popular brand of seasoned bread crumbs. Toss all of the ingredients into a small bowl, mix it up, and you're done. Use the finished product for an Italian-style breading—when frying or baking chicken, fish, pork chops, eggplant, etc.—just as you would the store-bought stuff.  

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Here's a recipe that comes from a challenge issued by the New York Daily News. The paper wanted to watch a West Coast dude duplicate the taste of an authentic New York City knish. But, mind you, not just any knish. This knish comes from one of the oldest knisheries in the Big Apple, a place that also takes pride in the low fat content of its knishes as opposed to the popular deep-fried variety. When I tasted the famous Yonah Schimmel knish (the first knish I had ever eaten), I realized that not only could a good clone recipe be created, but even more fat grams could be eliminated. The Daily News had a food lab analyze the fat content of the original knish and the clone, as well as the fat in a street vendor knish and a supermarket knish, just for comparison. The lab results are listed following the recipe.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

The cheesy little biscuits that come with your meal at the country's largest seafood chain were first served in 1990. According to a company spokesperson, it's the menu item the chain has become best known for. In 1997 the chain served over 435 million Cheddar Bay Biscuits.

Each of those small biscuits has around 7 grams of fat, but we're going to change that. Here is a delicious light version of the biscuits which tastes just as good as the original. Using reduced-fat Bisquick and reduced-fat shredded Cheddar cheese these biscuits are now less than half the fat of the originals. 

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 Biscuit
Total servings–12
Calories per serving–112 (Original–130)
Fat per serving–3g (Original–7g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur

I found the best way to get good cranberry flavor and light pink color into this clone is to use concentrated cranberry juice found in the frozen food section of your market. First, thaw the juice, then shake the canister before you open it. After you've measured out the 3 tablespoons of concentrate you'll need for this recipe, make the rest of the concentrate into juice and sip it with your freshly baked bagel clones. The most important step for commercial-quality chewy bagels is no secret: a thorough kneading process. Add flour to your hands if the bagels begin to stick while you form them. Any excess flour on the bagels will wash off when you drop them in the boiling water. Boiling the bagels before baking is called "kettling," and it's this step that gives bagels their shiny crust.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

In Cayce, South Carolina, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins were manufactured with state-of-the-art robotic equipment that would make R2-D2 jealous. The amazing machines do everything from packaging 130 muffins per minute to sealing up the cartons for a quick shipment to stores across the country.

This Top Secret Recipes reduced-fat clone version uses unsweetened applesauce to keep the muffins moist and to help replace fat.

Find more yummy copycat snack recipes here. 

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1/2 muffin
Total servings–16
Calories per serving–160 (Original–240)
Fat per serving–5.5g (Original–13g)

Source: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

After baking the big 'ol muffins, Otis Spunkmeyer freezes them so that they stay fresh on the way to the stores. Vendors thaw out the tasty baked goodies before displaying them on their shelves. Even after the muffins reach room temperature, they still have a very impressive shelf life of twenty-one days.

You can also freeze the muffins you make with this reduced-fat clone recipe. Just wait until they cool, then wrap the muffins in plastic wrap, and toss them in the freezer. And remember, the shelf life of your version without preservatives will be much less than that of the real McCoy, so dive into those muffins post haste.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1/2 muffin
Total servings–16
Calories per serving–165 (Original–210)
Fat per serving–4 g (Original–11g)

Who is Otis Spunkmeyer? Actually, he does not exist. The character who flies around in the plane pictured on the product labels, searching the world for premium ingredients, is just a catchy name dreamed up by founder Ken Rawling's 12-year-old daughter.

The company offers low-fat versions of many of its 11 varieties of muffins, but they are more difficult to track down than the original versions. 

This reduced-fat conversion clone recipe of the famous Texas-size muffins has 4 grams of fat per serving, or 8 grams total—quite a reduction compared to the original muffins, which have a total of 22 grams of fat each.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1/2 muffin
Total servings–16
Calories per serving–142 (Original–220)
Fat per serving–4g (Original–11g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

The American restaurant business has been shaped by many entrepreneurs, so determined to realize their dreams of owning a hot dog cart or starting a restaurant that they sell everything they own to raise cash. Food lore is littered with these stories, and this one is no exception. This time the family car was sold to pay for one month's rent on a converted World War II army tent, an oven, refrigerator, rolling pin, and some hand tools. It was 1948, and that's all Marie Callender and her family needed to make enough pies to start delivering to restaurants in Long Beach, California.

It was the pies that started the company, but soon the bakeries became restaurants and they started serving meals. One of my favorites is the Famous Golden Cornbread and whipped honey butter that comes with many of the entrees. What makes this cornbread so scrumptious is its cake-like quality. The recipe here requires more flour than traditional cornbread recipes, making the finished product soft and spongy just like Marie's.

Check out my other Marie Callender's hacks here. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The automated process for creating Krispy Kreme doughnuts, developed in the 1950's, took the company many years to perfect. When you drive by your local Krispy Kreme store between 5:00 and 11:00 each day (both a.m. and p.m.) and see the "Hot Doughnuts Now" sign lit up, inside the store custom-made stainless steel machines are rolling. Doughnut batter is extruded into little doughnut shapes that ride up and down through a temperature and humidity controlled booth to activate the yeast. This creates the perfect amount of air in the dough that will yield a tender and fluffy finished product. When the doughnuts are perfectly puffed up, they're gently dumped into a moat of hot vegetable shortening where they float on one side until golden brown, and then the machine flips them over to cook the other side. When the doughnuts finish frying, they ride up a mesh conveyor belt and through a ribbon of white sugar glaze. If you're lucky enough to taste one of these doughnuts just as it comes around the corner from the glazing, you're in for a real treat—the warm circle of sweet doughy goodness practically melts in your mouth. It's this secret process that helped Krispy Kreme become the fastest-growing doughnut chain in the country. 

As you can guess, the main ingredient in a Krispy Kreme doughnut is wheat flour, but there is also some added gluten, soy flour, malted barley flour, and modified food starch; plus egg yolk, non-fat milk, flavoring, and yeast. I suspect a low-gluten flour, like cake flour, is probably used in the original mix to make the doughnuts tender, and then the manufacturer adds the additional gluten to give the doughnuts the perfect framework for rising. I tested many combinations of cake flour and wheat gluten, but found that the best texture resulted from cake flour combined with all-purpose flour. I also tried adding a little soy flour to the mix, but the soy gave the dough a strange taste and it didn't benefit the texture of the dough in any way.  I excluded the malted barley flour and modified food starch from the Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut recipe since these are difficult ingredients to find. These exclusions didn't seem to matter because the real secret in making these doughnuts look and taste like the original lies primarily in careful handling of the dough.

The Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut recipe dough will be very sticky when first mixed together, and you should be careful not to over mix it or you will build up some tough gluten strands, and that will result in chewy doughnuts. You don't even need to touch the dough until it is finished with the first rising stage. After the dough rises for 30 to 45 minutes it will become easier to handle, but you will still need to flour your hands. Also, be sure to generously flour the surface you are working on when you gently roll out the dough for cutting. When each doughnut shape is cut from the dough, place it onto a small square of wax paper that has been lightly dusted with flour. Using wax paper will allow you to easily transport the doughnuts (after they rise) from the baking sheet to the hot shortening without deflating the dough. As long as you don't fry them too long—1 minute per side should be enough—you will have tender homemade doughnuts that will satisfy even the biggest Krispy Kreme fanatics.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

In 1959, Michael Ilitch and his wife, Marian, opened the first Little Caesars restaurant in Garden City, Michigan, fifteen miles west of Detroit. Encouraged by their success, the couple opened a second restaurant two years later, and soon Little Caesar's Pizza was a household name in the Detroit area. Biographical material provided by the company claims that Ilitch "thinks pizza," and that when he designed the Little Caesars conveyor oven, the company was able to serve hot pizza faster than anyone else in the industry.

One of the most popular products available from Little Caesars is the Crazy Bread, first served in 1982. It's pizza dough cut into eight pieces, then coated with garlic salt, butter, and Parmesan cheese. This recipe is made easily with a tube of Pillsbury pizza dough, which you slice into strips and bake.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Founder Ken Rawlings opened his first baked cookie store in San Francisco in 1977, and over the next five years the chain had grown to 22 stores throughout California. In 1990, after much success, Rawlings' Otis Spunkmeyer Company started selling ready-to-bake cookie dough in grocery stores. That same year the company acquired a Modesto, California, muffin manufacturer, and Otis Spunkmeyer Muffins were born. Since then, the company has seen a 1,200 percent increase in muffins sales, and today this is America's best-selling brand of muffins.

The banana-nut variety is my favorite, normally with 24 grams of fat per muffin, but many love the Otis Spunkmeyer blueberry muffins recipe. Real banana is a perfect substitute for much of the fat. Even with a small amount of oil in there, and the walnuts on top, these tasty Texas-size Otis Spunkmeyer banana nut muffins weigh in with less than half the fat of the original.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1/2 muffin
Total servings–16
Calories per serving–147 (Original–240)
Fat per serving–5g (Original–12g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

These muffins and the buttermilk spice muffins are the two top-sellers among the several muffins baked every day at the Irvine, California-based chain. If you like the combo of carrots, raisins, and walnuts in a super-moist cake, this is the muffin for you. The real thing is made dark with the addition of caramel coloring which you can find in many supermarkets or in stores which sell cake-decorating supplies. You can choose to skip this ingredient and your muffins will still come out great. They’ll just be a little lighter in color. This recipe is designed for a large muffin pan with 6 large muffin cups, but you can also use a standard-size 12 cup pan. Just reduce the baking time by 5 to 10 minutes.

Order an entree from America's largest seafood restaurant chain and you'll get a basket of some of the planet's tastiest garlic-cheese biscuits served up on the side. For many years this recipe has been the most-searched-for clone recipe on the Internet, according to Red Lobster. As a result, several versions are floating around, including one that was at one time printed right on the box of Bisquick baking mix.

The problem with making biscuits using Bisquick is that if you follow the directions from the box you don't end up with a very fluffy or flakey finished product, since most of the fat in the recipe comes from the shortening that's included in the mix. On its own, room temperature shortening does a poor job creating the light, airy texture you want from good biscuits, and it contributes little in the way of flavor. So, we'll invite some cold butter along on the trip -- with grated Cheddar cheese and a little garlic powder. Now you'll be well on your way to delicious Cheddar Bay. Wherever that is.

In 1991 Kentucky Fried Chicken bigwigs decided to improve the image of America's third-largest fast-food chain. As a more health-conscious society began to affect sales of fried chicken, the company changed its name to KFC and introduced a lighter fare of skinless chicken.

In the last forty years KFC has experienced extraordinary growth. Five years after first franchising the business, Colonel Harland Sanders had 400 outlets in the United States and Canada. Four years later there were more than 600 franchises, including one in England, the first overseas outlet. In 1964 John Y. Brown, Jr., a young Louisville lawyer, and Jack Massey, a Nashville financier, bought the Colonel's business for $2 million. Only seven years later, in 1971 Heublein, Inc., bought the KFC Corporation for $275 million. Then in 1986, for a whopping $840 million, PepsiCo added KFC to its conglomerate, which now includes Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. That means PepsiCo owns more fast food outlets than any other company including McDonald's.

At each KFC restaurant, workers blend real buttermilk with a dry blend to create the well-known KFC buttermilk biscuits recipe that have made a popular menu item since their introduction in 1982. Pair these buttermilk biscuits with KFC's mac and cheese recipe and the famous KFC Original Recipe Chicken, and skip the drive-thru tonight!

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

In 2007 America's number one Cajun-style restaurant celebrated its 35th birthday with 1,583 stores worldwide. But Popeyes didn't start out with the name that most people associate with a certain spinach-eating cartoon character. When Al Copeland opened his first Southern-fried chicken stand in New Orleans in 1972, it was called Chicken On The Run. The name was later changed to Popeyes after Gene Hackman's character in the movie The French Connection. In addition to great spicy fried chicken, Popeyes serves up wonderful Southern-style buttermilk biscuits that we can now easily duplicate to serve with a variety of home cooked meals. The secret is to cut cold butter into the mix with a pastry knife so that the biscuits turn out flaky and tender just like the originals.

Source: "Top Secret Recipes Unlocked" by Todd Wilbur.

It's dark, moist and delicious, and it comes in a breadbasket to your table at this French-themed West Coast casual restaurant. Now the tastiest carrot bread ever can be yours to create at home with a couple of grated carrots, molasses, raisins and chopped walnuts. You'll be baking this one in the oven for at least an hour. That should be enough time to warm up the house and send an incredible aroma wafting through every room. 

Now, how about some soup and Mimi's famous grilled cheese sandwich?

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

He knows when to hold 'em, he knows when to fold 'em. And lately hes been folding 'em quite a bit as Kenny Rogers Roasters restaurants across the country have bolted their doors for lack of interest. But that doesn't mean that Kenny didn't know how to make awesome corn muffins. And since it's hard to find a Kenny Rogers Roasters outlet these days, the only way to taste these great corn muffins now is to make them for ourselves at home. 

If you like your corn muffins sweeter, check out my clone recipe for Famous Dave's Corn Muffins.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Them's the biscuits at America's most popular stop for breakfast and a copycat McDonald's biscuit recipe is simple to make with Bisquick and buttermilk.

Psssst...there's a lot more McDonald's recipes over here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The website for Mimi’s Café features a recipe that claims to duplicate the buttermilk spice muffins that are so popular at the restaurant chain, but I found the recipe there to be slightly lacking. While the recipe produced very good muffins, I discovered the website formula required more sugar, more nutmeg and the addition of salt to produce muffins that could be considered clones of the popular version baked fresh every day in Mimi’s kitchens. To make this recipe work best use a large (Texas-size) muffin pan and line each cup with large paper muffin cups. You could also make the muffins in a smaller, standard-size muffin pan by reducing the baking times by 5 to 10 minutes, and adding only 1 teaspoon of topping on the batter in each cup rather than the 2 teaspoons described here. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Everyone knows the center of a cinnamon roll is the best part. With that in mind, McDonald's designed a cinnamon pastry where every bite is coated with the same deliciously gooey cinnamon and brown sugar filling that you discover only after working your way through the dry, doughy part of traditional cinnamon rolls. It's sort of like monkey bread, whereby chunks of dough are tossed in cinnamon sugar and then baked in a deep cake pan. The difference with this clone of the McDonald's version is that the filling is mixed with margarine and spooned onto the dough chunks in layers. And you bake this in small, single-serving portions. As it turns out, a Texas-size muffin tin, which has cups that are about twice the size of a standard muffin tin, is the perfect pan for this. You can also use disposable aluminum pot pie pans that many markets carry. Since this recipe makes a dozen servings, dig this: After the cinnamon melts have cooled, cover and freeze them. When you need a quick breakfast pastry or late-night snack, simply remove a melt from the pan, microwave for 35 seconds, or until hot (this is how McDonald's heats it, too), and you're instantly teleported to cinnamon roll paradise.

Cinnamon Roll fans may also want to try my clone recipe for Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Along with your meal at this huge national steakhouse chain, comes a freshly baked loaf of dark, sweet bread, served on its own cutting board with soft whipped butter. One distinctive feature of the bread is its color. How does the bread get so dark? Even though this recipe includes molasses and cocoa, these ingredients alone will not give the bread its dark chocolate brown color. Commercially produced breads that are this dark—such as pumpernickel or dark bran muffins–often contain caramel color, an ingredient used to darken foods. Since your local supermarket will not likely have this mostly commercial ingredient, we'll create the brown coloring from a mixture of three easy-to-find food colorings—red, yellow and blue. If you decide to leave the color out, just add an additional 1 tablespoon of warm water to the recipe. If you have a bread machine, you can use it for kneading the bread (you'll find the order in which to add the ingredients to your machine in "Tidbits"). Then, to finish the bread, divide and roll the dough in cornmeal, and bake.

Check out more of my copycat Outback Steakhouse recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

How would you like a killer biscuit recipe that has 75 percent less fat than typical biscuits, and still tastes great? And what if I told you they would still taste like those introduced to the world in 1982 by the world's largest chicken chain? Here you go—a clone recipe for making a low-fat version of KFC's Buttermilk Biscuits. Reduced-fat Bisquick and Butter Buds Sprinkles are the secret ingredients that help make this TSR low-fat conversion of a fast food favorite.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 Biscuit
Total servings–8
Calories per serving–115 (Original–180)
Fat per serving–2.5g (Original–10g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

This delicious fall offering arrives frozen to each Starbucks store and is thawed out just before opening in the morning. The pumpkin cream cheese muffins were especially popular in the fall of 2008. According to my local Starbucks manager, a memo fired off to all stores warned of a shortage in the product and that inventory in most states would be depleted before the holidays arrived. That was enough information to get me quickly working on a hack recipe, and here you go. First, sweeten some cream cheese and get it back in the fridge to firm up. It's much easier to work into the top of the muffins when it's cold. The pumpkin seeds that are sprinkled on top of each muffin get candied in a large skillet with brown sugar and cinnamon. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper muffin cups, add the muffin batter and some cream cheese, top with the candied pumpkins seeds, and then bake. Soon you'll have a dozen fresh clones of the amazing muffins, and you'll always be prepared for the next pumpkin cream cheese muffin shortage.

See if I cloned more of your favorites from Starbucks here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

It would take quite a bit of real lemon juice to give this moist loaf clone the perfect lemony zip of the original. With too much liquid we wind up with thin batter, and ultimately a baked lemon loaf that lacks the dense and flavorful quality of the coffeehouse original.  So, to avoid producing a batter that's too runny, we must turn to lemon extract. It's over by the vanilla extract in the baking aisle. This concentrated lemon flavoring works well alongside real lemon juice to give us the perfectly intense lemon flavor we need for a killer Starbucks lemon loaf cake true copycat recipe. The lemon extract also works like a charm to flavor the icing that will top off your fauxed food.

Re-create more of your favorite Starbucks drinks and treats here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

As he worked long, hard days at a shipyard in Hingham, Massachusetts, during World War II, William Rosenberg was struck with an idea for a new kind of food service. As soon as the war ended, Rosenberg started Industrial Luncheon Services, a company that delivered fresh meals and snacks to factory workers. When Rosenberg realized that most of his business was in coffee and donuts, he quit offering his original service. He found an old awning store and converted it into a coffee-and-donut shop called The Open Kettle. This name was soon changed to the more familiar Dunkin' Donuts, and between 1950 and 1955 five more shops opened and thrived. The company later spread beyond the Boston area and has become the largest coffee-and-donut chain in the world.

Today, Dunkin' Donuts offers fifty-two varieties of donuts in each shop, but the most popular have always been the plain glazed and chocolate-glazed yeast donuts.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

How would you like this job? Three times a day, each day, the chief bakers at Entenmann's gather in "scoring sessions," where they taste and rate products that come off the factory line. If a product they taste doesn't earn at least an 8 out of 10 rating, it never makes it onto a delivery truck. 

In the last ten years, Entenmann's has become known as a company that makes delicious baked fat-free products that do not taste fat-free. Today the company boasts around 50 products that carry the low-fat and fat-free labels. One of those products is the delicious pound cake, called Golden Loaf, cloned with this recipe. It makes an excellent dessert or snack when sliced with strawberries and low-fat whipped topping, or beneath a big scoop of light ice cream. I've also included this recipe to use with one of my favorites: the reduced-fat tiramisu.

However you decide to serve this versatile dessert, you will amaze your guests when you tell them it's fat-free fare. And, yes, I realize that the reduced-fat yellow cake mix contains fat, but we have stretched out the product with cake flour so that each slice of these cakes (the recipe makes two) contains less than 1/2 gram. 

Nutrition Facts:
Serving size–1.7 oz slice
Total servings–26
Calories per serving–106
Fat per serving–0g

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

A thick slice of moist pumpkin bread Starbucks-style is the perfect companion for your morning cup of Joe. Many other pumpkin bread recipes produce sad, squatty loaves—but not this clone. Here's a custom formula that makes enough batter to fill up a medium loaf pan. And when the bread is done, you'll slice the moist loaf into eight thick slices of goodness that perfectly mimic the look and flavor of the real thing right down to the chopped pumpkin seeds on top.

Craving your favorite Starbucks coffee drink? Click here for all of my Starbucks copycat recipes.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

"Biscotti" is Italian for "twice baked." The dough is first baked as one giant rectangular cookie loaf, then the loaf is removed from the oven while it's still soft, and it's sliced. These slices are arranged on a baking sheet and cooked once again until crispy. That's how the cookies get their thin profile and crunchiness that makes them the perfect coffee-dunking pastry. These homemade biscotti cookies are actually best the next day after they completely dry out, as long as you live in a dry climate. If your weather is more humid, be sure to seal up the cookies in a tight container after they cool so that they stay crunchy.

Find more cool Starbucks copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

You say you like your cinnamon rolls big? Then this is the clone recipe for you. The icing here includes fat-free cream cheese to create a smooth consistency while keeping the fat out.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1/2 roll
Total servings–16
Calories per serving–160
Fat per serving–2g

Source: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Entenmann's was one of the first on the block to put irresistible, low-fat versions of its delicious baked goods in front of us at the supermarket. The company's specialty is its low-fat sweet cinnamon rolls that taste as good as any of the full-fat varieties produced by other popular brands. 

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 roll
Total servings–12
Calories per serving–160
Fat per serving–2g

Source: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.