THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES
THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES

Cookies & Brownies

Nice work. You just found copycat recipes for all of 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. See if Todd has hacked your favorite cookies & brownies here. New recipes added every week.

Products: 124 of 52
Show: 24
  • Score: 4.92 (votes: 12)
    Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookies (TV)

    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.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Cliff and Buster Coconut Macaroons

    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.

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  • Score: 4.94 (votes: 18)
    DoubleTree Hotel Chocolate Chip Cookies

    When you check in at one of more than 250 hotels run by this U.S. chain, you are handed a bag from a warming oven that contains two soft and delicious chocolate chip cookies. This is a tradition that began in the early 80s using a recipe from a small bakery in Atlanta. All the cookies are baked fresh every day on the hotel premises. The chain claims to give out about 29,000 cookies every day. 

    Raves for the cookies from customers convinced the hotel chain to start selling tins of the cookies online. But if you've got an insatiable chocolate chip cookie urge that can't wait for a package to be delivered, you'll want to try my DoubleTree Hotel Chocolate Chip cookie copycat recipe below. Just be sure to get the cookies out of the oven when they are barely turning brown so that they are soft and chewy in the middle when cool. 

    Now that you're in the swing of things, try baking more famous cookies from my recipes here.

    Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

    Update 4/10/20: In April, Hilton Hotels released the actual recipe for the DoubleTree Hotels Signature Cookie for the first time. You can view that recipe and compare it to this clone recipe I created in 2002. I got pretty close!

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  • Score: 4.89 (votes: 9)
    Starbucks Peppermint Brownie

    Here's a great recipe for the holidays, or anytime you want, really. It's a mint chocolate brownie with peppermint buttercream frosting on top and creamy chocolate frosting on top of that. I've made my Starbucks Peppermint Brownie recipe easier by starting with a common fudge brownie mix. By changing the required ingredients listed on the brownie mix box and modifying some steps, we can improve on the finished product. 

    Rather than oil, use a stick of melted butter in your brownies for a richer, better flavor. And cook the brownies at a slightly lower temperature so that they come out moist and chewy. Since this recipe is for peppermint brownies, add just a bit of peppermint extract to the batter. The peppermint brownies from Starbucks have red and white frosting drizzled lightly across the top. To duplicate this easily, you can buy premade red and white colored frostings that come in little cans with tips included.

    Check out my other Starbucks copycat recipes here.

    Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 4.87 (votes: 23)
    Mrs. Fields Cranberry White Chocolate Cookies

    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.

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  • Score: 4.60 (votes: 10)
    Great American Cookies Snickerdoodles

    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.

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  • Score: 4.43 (votes: 69)
    Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bar

    Each holiday season, Starbucks brings out one of its most beloved desserts: a soft triangle of white chocolate and cranberry cake covered with delicious creamy lemon frosting and dried cranberries. But when the holidays are over, the Bliss Bars go back into hiding until next season. That's when we bust out our Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bar copycat recipe.

    The cake is flavored with bits of crystallized ginger that you can find in most markets near the herbs and spices. Be sure to finely mince the chunks of ginger before adding them, since ginger has a strong flavor, and you don't want anyone biting into a whole chunk. For the white chocolate, one 4-ounce bar of Ghirardelli white chocolate will give you the perfect amount of chunks after you chop it up. If you can't find that brand, any brand of white chocolate will do, or you can use 4 ounces of white chocolate chips. My cranberry bliss bar recipe below will make a total of 16 cake bars, at a fraction of the cost of the original.

    For a demonstration of this classic clone recipe, check out this video.

    Check out my other copycat recipes for more Starbucks favorites here.

    Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Not rated yet
    Knott's Berry Farm Shortbread Cookies

    It’s been nearly 100 years since Walter and Cordelia Knott first started selling berries, preserves, and pies from their roadside produce stand in Buena Park, California. Walter Knott’s berry stand and farm was a popular stop throughout the 1920s for travelers heading to the Southern California beaches.

    But Walter’s big claim to fame came in 1932 when he cultivated and sold the world’s first boysenberries—a hybrid of raspberry, blackberry, loganberry, and dewberry. This new berry brought so many people to the farm that they added a restaurant, featuring Cordelia’s secret fried chicken recipe, and the Knotts struck gold again.

    The fried chicken was a huge hit, and the restaurant got so crowded the Knotts added rides and attractions to the farm to keep customers occupied while they waited for a table. Over the years the real berry farm transformed into an amusement park called Knott’s Berry Farm—one of my favorites as a kid—which is now ranked as the tenth most visited theme park in North America.

    Knott’s Berry Farm also makes delicious packaged preserves, jams, and other foods, including these fantastic little jam-filled shortbread thumbprint cookies that everyone seems to love. The shortbread dough is piped into closed “c” shapes with a pastry bag onto baking sheets, then a little bit of jam is spooned into the center. For my Knott's Berry Farm Shortbread Cookies recipe below, you’ll need a pastry bag and a 1M open star tip, plus your favorite seedless jam. Once you’ve got all that, the rest is pretty easy.

    Follow this link for more copycat cookies, brownies and treats.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Walker's Shortbread

    Joseph 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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  • Not rated yet
    Starbucks Double Chocolate Brownie

    If you worship chocolate, this simple-to-make recipe of Starbucks' famous fudgy brownie is a blessing. The brownie is made with a double dose of chocolate—unsweetened cocoa and milk chocolate—and the top is sprinkled with chunks of dark chocolate.  The result is a moist, chewy brownie made with a perfect blend of chocolate. And it tastes like heaven.

    Prep your pan with a sling made from parchment paper. Slice the parchment long so that it fits into the bottom of the pan with each of the ends hanging over the top of the pan. I use two small binder clips to hold the paper in place so that it doesn’t fold into the pan during baking. When the brownies have cooled, remove the clips, grab the overhanging paper, and lift the brownies cleanly out of the pan to be sliced.

    Find more of your favorite Starbucks copycat recipes here

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  • Not rated yet
    Lofthouse Frosted Cookies

    When 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

    Jan 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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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 4)
    Subway Cookies

    The chewy, fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies sold at Subway are baked daily at the sandwich shop with frozen dough pucks provided by Otis Spunkmeyer. So, I guess you could say that this copycat recipe for several of Subway’s most popular cookies is also a clone of several of Otis Spunkmeyer’s most popular cookies.

    Perhaps the biggest secret revealed here is the butter/oil blend. Most cookie recipes call for just softened butter as the fat component, but that can add too much butter flavor. According to the ingredients list for these cookies, they contain a blend of oil and butter, which worked best as a 2-to-1 ratio of butter to oil after baking through a number of test batches. This fat blend helped improve the texture with crispier edges and a chewier middle, and the butter flavor was perfectly muted. Also, just one egg is added here—most cookie recipes like this add two—to make the cookies less cakey.

    Below you'll find my Subway cookies copycat recipes for Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Chip, and White Chip Macadamia Nut. I'll show you how to form the dough into pucks that can be frozen and either baked right away or saved for several weeks so that you can serve a batch of freshly baked cookies in just 20 minutes, with minimal effort, whenever you like.

    This recipe was my #4 most popular of 2023. Check out the other most popular unlocked recipes of the year: Church's Chicken Original and Spicy Fried Chicken (#1), IKEA Swedish Meatballs (#2), Chipotle Guacamole (#3), IHOP Thick 'N Fluffy French Toast (#5).

    Check out this list of our most popular recipes of all-time.

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    Subway Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies

    Subway’s most popular freshly baked cookie will remind you of biting into a delicious slice of berry cheesecake. The cookie dough has a little cream cheese in it, and the cookie is embedded with creamy white chocolate chips and flavorful real raspberry baking bits.

    The challenge for making a good clone was re-creating the raspberry bits found in the real cookie using easy steps that anyone could manage. I experimented with raspberry candy bits in the style of Turkish delight, gummies, and fruit rolls, but each of those techniques took much too long. Eventually, I mixed concentrated raspberry purée with white chocolate chips and got meltable real raspberry baking bits that were easy to make and tasted great.

    I’ll show you how to make those raspberry bits here with simple steps and photos, and then you’ll combine those bits with white chocolate chips and other ingredients for a batch of 22 cookies that will come out of your oven crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle, just like the real ones at the world’s biggest sandwich shop.

    Try my Subway Raspberry Cheesecake cookie recipe below, and find my recipes for Subway Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Chip, and White Chip Macadamia Nut cookies here.

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    Pepperidge Farm Pumpkin Cheesecake Soft Baked Cookies

    You might expect to find some sort of cheese in a product with “cheesecake” in the name, but that isn’t the case in this seasonal release from the famous bakery brand owned by Campbell’s Soup. There is real pumpkin in these chewy cookies that will appeal to lovers of the whole pumpkin spice thing, but the tiny drops in the cookies that I thought would taste like cheesecake, are just white chocolate chips. It’s up to us to imagine that white chocolate tastes like cheesecake, which it really doesn’t, but whatever. They’re still great cookies.

    My Pepperidge Farm Pumpkin Cheesecake Soft Baked Cookies copycat recipe is a cinch and will produce around 32 cookies that look and taste like the originals, right down to the color which is re-created with red and yellow food coloring in a 1-to-3 ratio. The pumpkin adds some orange color to the cookies, but to re-create the bright orange of the real thing, the added colors are essential.

    This hack re-creates the cookies with plain white chocolate chips just like the real thing, but if you want real cheesecake-flavored chips, I’ve got a quick recipe below in the Tidbits that combines cream cheese and melted white chocolate chips to make little cheesecake chunks. Mix these into your cookie dough and in a matter of minutes you’ll be serving pumpkin cheesecake cookies that truly live up to their name.

    Find more of your favorite Pepperidge Farm cookie recipes here

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    Nabisco Fig Newtons

    In 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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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Pogen's Gingersnaps

    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.

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  • Score: 4.64 (votes: 159)
    Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookies 1993

    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.

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  • Score: 4.67 (votes: 3)
    Pepperidge Farm Gingerbread Cookies

    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.

     

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 7)
    Mrs. Fields Pumpkin Harvest Cookies

    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.

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  • Not rated yet
    Bob Evans Farms Chocolate Chunk Cookies

    Bob Evans built his first restaurant on a farm in Rio Grande, Ohio in 1962, primarily to sell his own brand of high-quality sausage. Business was good. Really good. There are now over 500 Bob Evans Restaurants in 18 states, each one decorated in a country-living theme that reminds us of the original farm location. Customers seem to like it.

    They also seem to like the packaged baked goods sold at each of the restaurants under the Bob Evans Farms brand, especially this top-selling, chewy, chocolaty cookie that can now be hacked in a snap by you with my Bob Evans chocolate chunk cookies recipe. 

    You might also like my recipe for Bob Evans Banana Nut Bread Loaf.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Maggiano's Vera's Lemon Cookies

    One of the most-loved treats at the Maggiano's Little Italy restaurant chain are the crescent-shaped lemon cookies served at the end of your meal. The cookies are soft, chewy, and coated with a bright lemon icing, and it’s impossible to eat just one.

    Well, now you can eat as many as you like because my Maggiano's Vera's lemon cookie recipe makes five dozen lemony taste-alike cookies. And you won’t have to worry about getting a crescent cookie cutter to get the shapes right. First, cut out a circle using a round 2-inch biscuit cutter, then use the cutter to slice a chunk out of the round, making a crescent.

    You might also like my copycat recipe for Maggiano's Beef Tenderloin Medallions

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  • Not rated yet
    Panda Express Fortune Cookies

    I like making fortune cookies because it means I get to write fortunes. My fortunes are sometimes ridiculous (“No matter what, be sure you don’t…ah, never mind. Have a cookie.”), sometimes sarcastic (“Wow, you broke a cookie! Have you been working out?”), and sometimes paradoxical (“These cookies are filled with lies.”). But’s let’s face it, the fortune isn't the best part. What matters most is that the cookie tastes good.

    Contrary to popular belief, fortune cookies are not from China. They don’t even serve them in China. Fortune cookies are an American invention, created either in San Francisco or Los Angeles in the early 1900s—the exact origin is in dispute. Originally, I set out to clone the best-selling fortune cookie in the U.S., called Golden Bowl, made by Wonton Foods. But I found out that I don’t like those cookies. They're thin and tasteless and have an unnatural orange tint to them. Instead, I chose to hack the thicker, tastier, golden brown Panda Express fortune cookies.

    Fortune cookies start their life looking like pancake batter. The batter is formed into 3-inch circles that, when baked, become thin cookies. These are pliable when warm and crispy when cool—so you’ll need to work fast when forming them. Because they’re so thin, it’s best to bake the cookies on a silicone pad or nonstick foil. You can also use parchment paper, but it tends to ripple from the moisture of the batter, and that ripple shows up on the surface of the cookies.

    I suggest baking just three or four cookies at a time so that they'll all be warm and pliable while you add the fortunes and shape them. And if you're very fortunate, you can find a helpful someone to assist you with that part, so you'll be able to make more cookies faster. 

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    Pepperidge Farm Chesapeake Dark Chocolate Pecan Cookies

    The Chesapeake brand of cookies from Pepperidge Farm are crispy cookies with a light crunch and filled with various chunks of chocolate and nutty bits. One of the most popular choices features big chunks of dark chocolate along with pecan bits, and it can be duplicated at home with a few twists to one of my chocolate chip cookie recipes.

    To make a crispy cookie that’s tender and not tough, I’ve replaced some of the butter with shortening, replaced one egg with an egg white, and tweaked the baking powder/baking soda ratio.

    Nestle makes a 10-ounce bag of oversized dark chocolate chips that are delicious and work nicely for this clone. If you can’t find those, you can chop up a couple of your favorite dark chocolate bars into small chunks and add those to the mix.

    When the cookies are cool, they should be lightly crispy and filled with flavor, just like the original Pepperidge Farm Chesapeake cookies. Store them in a covered container in a dry spot.  

    Try more famous copycat cookies and brownie recipes here.  

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I'm Todd Wilbur, Chronic Food Hacker

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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