These candy-coated biscuit sticks come in dozens of flavors today, but for years the original chocolate flavor invented by Yoshiaki Koma in Japan in 1966 was the only Pocky you could eat. Almond and strawberry were introduced in the ‘70s, and as Pocky sales grew throughout Asia and the world, more flavors were added including the popular matcha and cookies and cream found just about everywhere these days.

Our homemade version starts by making a proper biscuit stick with a buttery flavor like the original. We’ll use real butter here rather than butter flavoring found in the real thing because we can. To give the stick its tender bite I found that pastry flour, with its lower gluten content, worked much better than all-purpose. I recommend Bob’s Red Mill brand pastry flour. And to further tenderize the sticks we’ll use both yeast and baking powder for leavening, just like the real ones.

You can make dozens of very thin sticks by rolling the dough to 1/8-inch thick and about 5 inches wide. Use a sharp paring knife guided by a straight edge, like a metal ruler, to slice 1/8-inch wide strips of dough and arrange them on a lined baking sheet. I found that chilling the rolled-out dough in your freezer for 10 minutes makes the dough more manageable and the thin strips of dough will be less likely to break as you work with them.  

Three coating flavors are included here: Chocolate, strawberry and matcha. The chocolate coating is made with chocolate-flavored melting chips or chunks and melts easily in your microwave. The strawberry and matcha are made with white chocolate or vanilla melting chips, with strawberry oil and real matcha powder added for flavor.      

I've hacked a lot of famous candy over the years. See if I copied your favorites here. 

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. Store them in a covered container in a dry spot.  

Try more famous copycat cookies and brownie recipes here.  

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 cloned 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 clone 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.

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 had a hack 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). This clone recipe will make 48 cookies, or more than twice what you get in two 10-ounce packages of the real thing.

Get this recipe in "Top Secret Recipes Unleashed" exclusively on Amazon.com.

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 fortune cookies you get at the largest Chinese take-out chain.

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. 

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 this knockoff 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. 

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, chocolate chunk cookie that can now be hacked in a snap by you. Try this Bob Evans chocolate chunk cookies recipe today. Make sure to buy chocolate chunks for baking!

There is no consensus on the origin of the name "Oreo." But one of the most interesting explanations I've heard is that the two o's from the word chocolate were placed on both sides of re from the word creme. This way the name seems to mimic the construction of the famed sandwich cookie.

That may or may not be true, but I know this for sure: Nabisco introduced a reduced-fat version of its popular cookie in 1994. With only half the fat, it manages to taste just as good as the original version invented way back in 1912. We cut back on the fat for our clone here by re-creating the creme filling without any of the shortening you'd find in the original full-fat version. We do this with a special technique developed in the secret underground Top Secret Recipes test kitchen that allows you to create a delicious, fat-free filling in your microwave. If you want the cookies as dark as the original, include the optional brown paste food coloring in your recipe.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–3 cookies
Total servings–18
Calories per serving–150
Fat per serving–3.5g

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 is also a brand of delicious preserves, jams, and other foods, including these fantastic little jam-filled shortbread 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. 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.

Each holiday season Starbucks brings out one of its most beloved dessert recipes: 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 copycat Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bar 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 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. This clone recipe 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.

When cloning cookies for the holidays, why not clone the best? Pepperidge Farm's Ginger Man cookies bring 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.

You're not in the mood for pumpkin pie, but you want to bake something with pumpkin in it for the holidays. Give this clone of the seasonal Mrs. Fields favorite 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.

To dispel the urban legend of the $250 recipe in the infamous chain letter, Neiman Marcus created an actual recipe for chocolate chip cookies and displayed it on the Neiman Marcus website. Since I get so many request for that formula, I'm posting the real Neiman Marcus recipe here. 

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 clone, these cookies will, at first, 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 very first Top Secret Recipe: Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookie here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

As you try this Chips Ahoy! copycat cookie recipe, imagine producing a quarter of a million cookies and crackers every minute. That's what Nabisco does. Which is why the conglomerate is the largest manufacturer of cookies and crackers in the world. Chips Ahoy! Chocolate Chip Cookies were developed in 1964, along with Chicken In A Biscuit Crackers and Mister Salty Pretzels. But Chips Ahoy! became the big winner for the company. Today it's the world's top-selling chocolate-chip cookie, with more than 6 billion sold every year.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

No one knows the exact origin of the vanilla wafer but it's guessed that the recipe was developed in the South. The wafers were being created from scratch at home long before Nabisco introduced the lightweight, poker chip-like packaged cookies in 1945. Back then they were called Vanilla Wafers. But in the 60's Nabisco slapped the trade name Nilla Wafers on the box. Today the real things come about 100 to a box and really fly when whipped into the air with a little flick of the wrist. Here now, you can relive the days of old with a homemade version fresh out of the oven. This clone recipe makes about half a box's worth, and they fly just as far.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

At one time Nabisco actually conducted a study to determined that 50 percent of Oreo consumers twist the cookie apart before eating it. I guess this is important information since it concerns the world's top-selling cookie. Historians at Nabisco aren't sure who came up with the idea for this sandwich cookie back in 1912, but they do know that it was introduced along with two other cookie creations that have long since died. The name may have come from the Greek word for mountain, oreo, which would once have made sense because the first test version was hill-shaped. When the Oreo was first sold to the public, it was much larger than today's cookie, but it kept shrinking over the years until Nabisco realized it had become too small and had to enlarge it again to today's current 1 3/4-inch diameter. 

In 1975, Nabisco figured we couldn't have too much of a good thing, so the company gave us Double Stuf Oreos, with twice the filling. But why stop there? Now you're free to pile as much "stuf" on your cookies as you like.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur. 

Watch this video demo: How to Clone an Oreo Cookie (plus how to make a really BIG Oreo!).

One of the favorite SnackWell's creations are the very low-fat snack bars that come in several varieties, including apple raisin, banana, golden cake, and this one, which tastes like a brownie. But, while a single full-fat brownie might contain around 6 to 10 grams of fat, this snack bar weighs in with just a fraction of that—only 2 grams of fat per serving.

The secret to keeping the fat to a minimum in this recipe is the use of egg whites, corn syrup, and chocolate syrup. These fat-free ingredients help to replace much of the fat that would be found in the traditional recipe, while keeping the finished product moist and chewy, and filled with flavor.

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size–1 bar
Servings–21
Calories per serving–144
Fat per serving–2g

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

These soft, creme-filled cookies are one of the most drooled-over snacks in the popular line of Little Debbie products. The secret to cloning the light version of these mouthwatering sandwich cookies is in re-creating the soft, chewy consistency of the oatmeal cookies. To duplicate the texture, the cookies are slightly underbaked. For the filling we'll use marshmallow creme straight out of the jar. Just be sure to eat these within a day or two of filling them, since the filling may begin to slowly creep out from between the cookies in warm weather. Also, keep these sandwich cookies wrapped in plastic or sealed in an airtight container so that they'll stay moist and chewy.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 sandwich cookie
Total servings–20
Calories per serving–146
Fat per serving–2.5g

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

GrandMa's Cookie Company was founded back in 1914 by Foster Wheeler, but it wasn't until 1977 that the company introduced the popular Big Cookie. This large, soft cookie comes two to a pack and is offered in several varieties, including oatmeal raisin. Now you can bake up a couple batches of your own with this GrandMa's oatmeal raisin cookies copycat. Just be sure not to over bake these. You want the cookies soft and chewy when cool—just like a happy grandma would make. Be sure to take the cookies out of the oven when they are just beginning to turn light brown around the edges.

You might also like my copycat for GrandMa's Peanut Butter Big Cookies.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Update 1/13/17: For an improved GrandMa's Big Cookies recipe, replace the 1/2 cup shortening with 3/4 cup softened unsalted butter. Also, reduce baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons and cinnamon to 1/2 teaspoon. Raising the oven temperature a little—to 300 degrees F—will help with browning and still keep the cookies chewy. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes.

This company was founded as the United Biscuit Company of America back in 1927. It was made up of sixteen bakeries from Philadelphia to Salt Lake City, marketing cookies and crackers under a variety of brand names. That system lasted for twenty-two years, and eventually the name Keebler was adopted for the entire conglomerate. Keebler was linked with the United Biscuit name once again after it was bought in 1974 by a British company of that name.

Today the company makes 50 billion cookies and crackers each year; among them are the popular Pecan Sandies, first sold in 1955. The Toffee variety came thirty-eight years later.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Rather than trying to beat the competitors—especially if they have an exceptional product—Mrs. Fields Famous Brands throws cash at 'em. With the acquisition of Great American Cookies in 1998 by the company that made chewy mall cookies big business, Mrs. Fields is now peddling her baked wares in more than 90 percent of the premier shopping malls in the United States. That's how you make some serious dough. One of the all-time favorite cookies you can grab at any of the 364 Great American Cookies outlets is the classic snickerdoodle. Rolled in cinnamon and sugar, it's soft and chewy and will seem to be undercooked when you take it out of the oven. When it cools it should be gooey, yet firm in the middle. Just a couple bites should make you wonder: "Got milk?!" 

Check out my recipe for Great American White Chunk Macadamia cookies here. 

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

When these cookies are cool, be sure to seal them up real tight in something like Tupperware or a Ziploc bag. That's the way to keep them moist and chewy like the original GrandMa's Big Cookies. In fact, he real product claims to be the only national cookie brand that guarantees the freshness of the product or double your money back. That confident guarantee comes from the current manufacturer, Frito-Lay, which purchased the GrandMa's Cookies brand from General Mills back in 1980.

You might also like my copycat for GrandMa's Big Raising Cookies. 

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Update 1/13/17: For an improved recipe, replace the 1/2 cup shortening with 3/4 cup softened unsalted butter. Also, reduce the baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons. 2 teaspoons is too much. Also, raising the oven temperature a little—to 300 degrees F—will help with browning and still keep the cookies chewy. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes.

If you're a ginger snap fanatic, clone the cookie giant's store-bought version in a, uh, snap. And if you're watching the fat, four of these cookies check in with a total of around 2.5 grams of fat.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–4 cookies
Total servings–30
Calories per serving–110
Fat per serving–2.5g

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

When Arthur Karp shared his grandmother's favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe with Michael Coles, the business partners knew they had a hit on their hands. They opened their first Great American Cookies store in 1977 in The Perimeter Mall in Atlanta, Georgia. Now with more than 350 stores in the chain, these cookies have quickly become a favorite, just begging to be cloned. The chain bakes the cookies in convection ovens at the low temperature of 280 degrees for around 16 to 17 minutes. But since most of us don't have convection ovens and may have a hard time getting the oven temperature to this odd setting, I have made some adjustments. Just be sure, when you remove the cookies from the oven, that they appear undercooked and only slightly browned around the edges. This will give the cookies the perfect chewy texture when they cool.

You might also like my recipe for Great American Snickerdoodles. 

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

These soft, creme-filled sandwich cookies were the first snacks produced by McKee Foods back in 1960. It was his 4-year-old granddaughter Debbie after whom founder O.D. McKee named his line of snack cakes. O.D. was inspired by a picture of the little girl in play clothes and a straw hat, and that's the image we still find today on every package. The secret to cloning these mouth-watering snacks is re-creating the soft, chewy consistency of the oatmeal cookies. To duplicate the texture, the cookies are slightly underbaked. Then you whip up some of the easy-to-make creme filling with marshmallow creme and spread it between two of the oatmeal cookies to complete the sandwich.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Update 1/26/17: Bump up the ginger flavor a little by adding another 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger to the recipe. Also, reduce the cinnamon, so that it doesn't dominate, by 1/2 teaspoon.

Nabisco debuted its first six SnackWell's line of productions in 1992 to rave reviews and more than impressive sales. The company was having a hard time keeping up with the extraordinary demand, and customers would find empty shelves in the supermarkets where SnackWell's cookies were once stocked. A series of commercials addressed the supply problem with the shelf-stocking "Cookie Man" attacked by ravenous women in search of the popular products. The announcer told everyone not to worry—the products would soon be on their way.

Today, supply has caught up with demand, and stores are able to keep plenty of these products in stock, including the bite-size chocolate chip cookies, which can be cloned with this recipe. The cookies are easily made so small by rolling the dough into long logs, which you then chill, slice, and bake. 

Nutrition facts 
Serving size–13 cookies 
Total servings–11 
Calories per serving–105 
Fat per serving–3.3g

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

Formerly called the National Biscuit Company, Nabisco was formed in the late 1800s by several bakeries that joined together to meet a growing demand. In the 1870s Nabisco's forefathers had introduced the first individually packaged baked goods. Before this, cookies and crackers had been sold from open barrels or biscuit boxes. The company has become the world's largest manufacturer of cookies and crackers, selling some 42 million packages of Nabisco products each day to retail outlets on every continent.

Nutter Butter Cookies were introduced in 1969 and have quickly taken their place alongside Nabisco's most popular products, including Oreos, Chips Ahoy!, and Fig Newtons.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Keebler joined in a federation with sixteen local and regional bakeries to help form the United Biscuit Company in 1927. This system lasted for twenty-two years, until 1949, when the conglomerate chose to operate under a single name. Keebler was judged to be the most sound and memorable. In 1983 Keebler expanded its distribution to the West Coast, making the conglomerate a national concern.

Today Keebler manufactures more than 200 different products from its 83,000-square-foot facility in Elmhurst, Illinois. Those products, including the chewy Soft Batch cookie, are sold in some 75,000 retail outlets nationwide. Total annual sales for the company are in excess of $1.5 billion, making Keebler the second-largest cookie and cracker manufacturer in the United States, with popular products that have been enjoyed by five generations of Americans. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The full-fat version of these delicious discs are the top-selling shortbread cookies in the United States. It's no wonder the baked-goods giant elected to introduce a reduced-fat version in 1994. You'll find this clone as easy to make as any other cookie recipe, but with much less fat in the crispy finished product.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 cookie
Total servings–30
Calories per serving–80
Fat per serving–3g

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

How can you resist the cute little girls in those adorable green outfits—and a change machine around their waists? If you can't, then a least it's good to know that less than one-third of the sales price of each box of Girl Scout Cookies goes to the manufacturer. That's much less than the wholesale price food retailers pay for similar products. Most of the money raised from each sale goes to support the Girl Scouts. But how do we get our Girl Scout Cookie fix during the off-season when the cookies aren't being sold? That's when we can turn to a clone recipe such as this one for the reduced-fat cookie with the lemony tang. Included here is the custom Top Secret Recipes technique for making a delicious filling that's entirely fat-free.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–3 cookies
Total servings–14
Calories per serving–150
Fat per serving–4.5g

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

In 1995 pediatric nurse Lindsay Frucci discovered a way to make chewy, fudgy brownies without any of fat. Today you can find her brownie mix boxes in thousands of grocery stores and specialty markets throughout the country. All you have to do is add some nonfat vanilla yogurt to the dry mix and bake. The brownies that emerge from your oven are good, but the mix can be pricey. One box of No Pudge! Fat Free Fudge Brownie Mix will set you back around four bucks, which seems like a lot when you consider that boxes of regular brownie mix from larger brands such as Pillsbury or Duncan Hines contain similar ingredients but sell for roughly half that. So I spent a week burning through gobs of cocoa, sugar, and flour in hopes of discovering an easy way to re-create that tasty mix at a fraction of the cost of even the cheapest brownie mix on the market. After much trial and error I finally nailed it.

I tried many batches with Hershey's and Nestle's cocoa, but eventually decided the best widely available unsweetened cocoa powder for the task is the stuff made by Ghirardelli. Before you assemble this clone recipe, you'll also want to track down baker's sugar, which is a superfine sugar, and some powdered egg whites (health foods stores or cake decorating suppliers carry this). Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl, and when you're ready to make the brownies, simply mix in 2/3 cup of nonfat vanilla yogurt, just like with the real thing. In 34 baking minutes (same as regular minutes, but they seem much longer) you'll have one plate of amazing fat-free chocolate brownies ready to eat.

Click here for more famous cookie and brownie copycat recipes.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

While passing these out to each giddy audience member on her 2003 "Favorite Things" show, Oprah gushed, "Isn't that the best macaroon you've ever had?" The recipe for these delicious yet easy-to-clone coconut macaroons was passed down to Cliff Barsevich years ago from his grandmother, and they were served at the events serviced by Cliff and partner Ron Strles' catering business. When customers continued to rave about the cookies, the duo began selling the macaroons by the box in high-end stores such as Neiman Marcus. With a lot of help from The Oprah Winfrey Show, the cookies have become a huge success. Still, at 15 bucks a dozen, it's nice to have a clone that will satisfy your macaroon munchies at a fraction of the cost. It's the closest we'll ever get to a homemade version since Cliff says he's never sharing the recipe. He says when he dies he's taking the secret formula with him.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

The easiest recipes often make the best food, and this simple clone reproduces one of my favorites. The cinnamon-and-sugar-topped snickerdoodles from Pepperidge Farm's line of soft cookies taste really good and are a perfect chewy consistency—eating just one an exercise in futility. The steps here are pure Baking 101, but don't wander too far from the kitchen when the cookies go in the oven so that they don't overbake. You want to yank the cookies out of the oven when they are just slightly browned and still soft. After they cool, store the cookies in an airtight container to keep them soft and chewy.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Here's a great one 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. And to simplify the cloning process, we start 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.

These chewy little fat-free cookies have become popular in recent years. And they taste pretty good considering there’s a zero the fat column. The sweetened condensed milk, molasses, and raisin puree helps give the cookies a delicious flavor along with the perfect chewy texture. Sweetened condensed milk can be found in a fat-free variety that Is made with skim milk, and raisin puree is easy to make in a blender.

Nutrition facts:
Serving size–2 cookies
Total servings–12
Calories per serving–120
Fat per serving–0g

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

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 of 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 this cloned version. 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 1/13/17: I like to drop the baking temperature to 325 degrees F for a chewier (better) cookie. Cook for about the same amount of time, 16 to 18 minutes.

Update 4/10/20: In April, Hilton Hotels released the actual recipe for the DoubleTree Hotels Signature Cookie for the first time. You can open that recipe in another window to see how close the real recipe revealed in 2020 comes to this clone recipe I created in 2002.

If those cute little cookie peddlers aren't posted outside the market, it may be tough to get your hands on these—the most popular cookies sold by the Girl Scouts every spring. One out of every four boxes of cookies sold by the girls is Thin Mints. This hack Girl Scout cookie thin mint recipe uses an improved version of the chocolate wafers created for the Oreo cookie clone in the second TSR book More Top Secret Recipes. That recipe creates 108 cookie wafers, so when you're done dipping, you'll have the equivalent of three boxes of the Girl Scout Cookies favorite. That's why you bought those extra cookie sheets, right? You could, of course, reduce this thin mint recipe by baking only one-third of the cookie dough for the wafers and then reducing the coating ingredients by one-third, giving you a total of 36 cookies. But that may not be enough to last you until next spring.

Click here for more of your favorite Girl Scout Cookies. 

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Update 11/16/17: You can make an even better clone using a chocolate product that wasn't available when I created this recipe. Rather than using the semi-sweet chocolate chips combined with shortening and peppermint for coating the cookies, use Ghirardelli Dark Melting Wafers. You will need 2 10-ounce bags of the chips, mixed with 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract (and no shortening). Melt the chocolate the same way, and dip the cookies as instructed.

Here's the first Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookie copycat recipe I created for the Top Secret Recipes books 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.

Try my improved version that I created with the secrets that I learned at Mrs. Fields HQ here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Before Wally Amos shared his soon-to-be-famous homemade chocolate chip cookies with the world, he landed a job in the mailroom at the William Morris talent agency and soon became the agency's first African-American talent agent. Wally's unique approach of sending performers boxes of homemade chocolate chip cookies that he developed from his aunt's secret recipe eventually helped him get Diana Ross & The Supremes as clients. After perfecting his cookie recipe in 1975, Wally launched his own cookie company and, solely from word of mouth, his baking business boomed. Today there are several flavors of Famous Amos Cookies, including oatmeal chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter, but it is the plain chocolate chip cookies that are the most popular. The clone here will give you 100 little chocolate chip cookies just like the originals that are crunchy and small enough to dunk into a cold glass of moo juice. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

In 1987 the Mrs. Fields Corporation devised a rather clever treat called the Peanut Butter Dream bar-a delicious combination of peanut butter, chocolate, and a cookie-crumb crust. It was not only a tasty product but an economical one. Mrs. Fields has always had the policy of removing cookies that are more than two hours old from outlet display cases. Now, instead of being thrown away, the cookies are crumbled up and mixed with melted butter to form the Dream Bar crust. If you can't talk your local Mrs. Field's outlet into giving you old cookies for this Peanut Butter Dream Bar recipe, make your own cookies using my recipe found here.

Brothers Jacob and Joseph Loose had a dream of creating products in a bakery filled with sunshine. In 1912 they got their wish by opening the famous "Thousand Window Bakery" in Long Island City, New York. It was the largest bakery in the world until 1955. Today Sunshine Biscuits has moved to another location in Sayerville, New Jersey, where ovens the size of football fields bake like crazy every day. Sunshine is now owned by Keebler and continues to produce many baked treats you're familiar with, such as Hydrox Cookies, Saltine Crackers, Vienna Fingers, Cheez-it Crackers, and these sweet Lemon Coolers. By making a few simple adjustments to the Nilla Wafer clone recipe, we can create a cool copy of these awesome little citrusy wafer cookies dusted with lemon-flavored powdered sugar. To make that coating, we'll use a little unsweeteneed Kool-Aid lemonade drink mix combined with powdered sugar. Shake the cookies in a bag with this mixture—we'll call it bake 'n shake—and you've got yourself another tasty knock-off. Try this Sunshine Lemon Cooler cookies recipe today!

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

According to Main On Foods, the manufacturer and distributor of Twin Dragon Almond Cookies, the original recipe was brought to this country in 1951 by a Chinese baker who owned a small corner shop in downtown Los Angeles. That retail bakery is gone now, but its most popular product, the world's best-tasting almond cookie, is still selling.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Since they only sell these once a year, in the spring, you're bound to crave them again sometime in the fall. Now you can have a fresh batch in the off-season made from this clone recipe for the first variety of cookies sold by the Girl Scouts back in 1917.

Craving Thin Mints? Get more Girl Scout Cookies copycat recipes here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.