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- In-N-Out Burger Vanilla Shake
In-N-Out Burger's delicious shakes are made with real ice cream, and that's a good thing, but this vanilla shake has a unique taste that's more than just straight vanilla—I sense a hint of buttery caramel. Riffing on that idea, I came up with an easy recipe for In-N-Out Vanilla Shakes, using a blend of French vanilla ice cream and whole milk, along with a simple secret ingredient: caramel topping. Spooning just 1 tablespoon of Smucker’s caramel topping into the blender before mixing it all up produced a vanilla shake remarkably similar to the one that’s been served at In-N-Out Burger since 1975.
Unfortunately, a milkshake produced with a home blender is thinner than a restaurant milkshake made with a milkshake machine. To fix that, after mixing your shake in the blender, place the blender in your freezer for a bit until the shake firms up, then mix it once again, spoon it into a tall glass, and serve it with a wide straw.
Try my In-N-Out Vanilla Shake recipe and pair it with my improved In-n-Out Double-Double hamburger recipe here.
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- 2 cups French vanilla ice cream
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1 tablespoon Smucker's caramel topping
Combine the ice cream and milk in a blender and blend on medium speed until smooth. Add the caramel into the center of the blender and blend again until the caramel is no longer visible. Pour the shake into a 12-ounce glass or cup and serve it with a straw. For a thicker shake, place the blender into the freezer for 30 minutes after mixing, then mix the shake once again before serving.
Makes 1 12-ounce shake.
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Portillo's Chocolate Cake
Read moreI can confirm that the secret recipe for Portillo’s Chocolate Cake is as simple as adding a cup of mayonnaise, a cup of water, and three eggs to a box of chocolate cake mix and baking it in two 9-inch pans at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. The frosting on the cake is the kind you find in the baking aisle in tubs for $2. That's it.
The recipe I've described would cost around $6 to make at home, and yet you'll pay $75 to have a frozen version of the real Portillo's cake delivered to your house. I know this because I did it. It was the easiest way to confirm my suspicions about the recipe. And sure enough, the cake packaging listed ingredients one would find in just about every box of grocery store cake mix: diglycerides, dicalcium phosphate, and propylene glycol.
Perhaps you prefer not to pay $75 for a cake you can make at home for 6 bucks. I get that. Maybe you also want chocolate cake that's not made with boxed cake mix because it’s, well, boxed cake mix. Same here. So, I wondered if I could make a similarly moist mayonnaise chocolate cake just like Portillo's, but this time from scratch, with wholesome ingredients in both the cake and the icing. Thankfully, after baking over a dozen different cakes I finally came up with a recipe that tastes like Portillo's Chocolate Cake but without the hard-to-spell additives found in the real thing.
And if mayonnaise sounds like an unusual ingredient for a cake, fear not. Practically everything in it benefits your cake batter. The blend of eggs and fat helps keep the cake fluffy and moist, salt and sugar add flavor, as do the vinegar and lemon juice which also assist with the leavening process to produce a tall cake with a light crumb. You could say mayonnaise is the perfect ingredient.
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Texas Roadhouse Rolls & Cinnamon Butter
Read moreI 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 Texas Roadhouse Rolls 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).
Check out this list of our most popular recipes of all-time.
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IHOP Red Velvet Pancakes
Read moreBy making a few tweaks to basic pancake batter, including adding a little cake flour to the mix, traditional flapjacks are deliciously converted into ritzy, flat red velvet cakes just like those offered for a limited time at the world's largest pancake chain.
But my IHOP Red Velvet Pancakes copycat recipe would not be complete without a sweet clone for the cream cheese icing that's drizzled over the top, so that's included here as well.
Cooking these pancakes on a griddle pan set over medium/low heat seems to work the best. Just be sure to give your pan plenty of time to heat up and only add the nonstick spray once.
I've copied a ton of items from IHOP. See if I hacked your favorites here.
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Cheesecake Factory Cheeseburger Spring Rolls
Read moreHere's how to build a cheeseburger in crispy spring roll dough and make the secret 4-ingredient dipping sauce for a perfect hack of Cheesecake Factory’s Cheeseburger Spring Rolls. I found the best solution for a good clone was to first cook two 4-ounce Angus patties—with no less than 15 percent fat, so the beef stays juicy—in a sauté pan until browned. I then sautéed some onion in the same pan and mixed it into the crumbled patties, with ketchup and diced American cheese.
I tried several different wrappers and found that the thin wrappers work best. Try to find wrappers that say “super thin” on them. Thicker dough wrappers will blister when fried, which is not how the restaurant version looks, although the thicker wrappers still make tasty spring rolls.
Rice paper wrappers will give you a chewier, less crispy bite, and are a good option if you're interested in a gluten-free version. If you go with rice paper, you won’t need the cornstarch solution to seal them. Dipping the whole wrapper in a little water makes the rice paper pliable and naturally sticky.
Try my Cheesecake Factory Cheeseburger Spring Rolls copycat recipe below, and check out more of my Cheesecake Factory copycat recipes here.
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Cheesecake Factory Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake
Read moreThe Cheesecake Factory’s latest decadent dessert goes extreme with America’s favorite cookie. You’ll find Oreos in the middle of the cheesecake, in the cookie mousse layer, pressed onto the edge, sprinkled on the whipped cream, and even up on top where an Oreo wafer crowns each slice. In fact, I’ve designed my copycat Cheesecake Factory Oreo cheesecake recipe to use every Oreo in a standard size-package—all 36 of them!
This beautiful cheesecake starts with a chocolate cake layer, topped with a layer of chocolate buttercream icing, followed by a no-bake cheesecake layer, Oreo cookie mousse, and more chocolate icing. It’s a chocolate lover’s—and Oreo lover’s—dream, and not surprisingly, one of Cheesecake Factory’s best sellers.
When creating your own version of this dessert masterpiece at home, be sure to use a 10-inch springform pan. This is a big cheesecake, so you'll get 12 large slices out of it. The restaurant charges around 56 bucks for a whole cheesecake this big, but thankfully, you can use my Cheesecake Factory Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake copycat recipe for a homemade version will cost you much less than that.
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Chili's Chicken Crispers and Honey Mustard Dressing
Read moreMenu Description: "Strips of hand-battered chicken fried to perfection. Served w/sweet corn on the cob, honey-mustard dressing and homestyle fries."
When biting into Chili's delicious trademarked Chicken Crispers, I detect the distinct flavor of MSG, or monosodium glutamate. Although there is no English word for it, the Japanese call this flavor "umami", and it delivers a taste sensation that is different from bitter, salty, sweet, or sour flavors. This "fifth flavor" is created naturally by glutamic acid, an amino acid, and it can be found in mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, fish and dairy products. But rather than adding something like Accent flavor enhancer—which is pure MSG—to this recipe, I thought of another approach.For my Chili's Chicken Crispers copycat recipe, I decided to bring canned chicken broth into the mix. Most chicken broths, including Swanson brand, contain autolyzed yeast extract. These yeast enzymes release flavor-enhancing compounds that work just like MSG, amplifying flavors in much the same way. Plus, the chicken broth is made with other goodies such as carrot, onion, and celery that will contribute to a tasty, crunchy coating. As for the frying, Chili's has recently switched to a shortening that contains no trans fat. So, if you want the best clone of Chili's Chicken Crispers, use shortening, but find the kind that has no trans fat. Crisco now makes a version, and so does Smart Balance. Shortening produces a superior clone, and it will release less "fry smell" into your house. You can also use vegetable or canola oil.
I've also included my Chili's Honey Mustard Dressing copycat recipe that's easy to make with just 5 ingredients.
Try more of my Chili's copycat recipes here.
Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur. -
Starbucks Birthday Cake Pops
Read moreA fork is no longer necessary to eat cake with Starbucks new portable pastry creation on a stick. The emerging trend of cake pops on blogs and at specialty bake shops caught the attention of the world’s largest coffee house chain. Starbucks research and development chefs figured out how to produce three different flavors for the large coffee chain: tiramisu, rocky road and the most popular flavor: birthday cake hacked here, which celebrates Starbucks’ 40th anniversary. The pops are each made by hand for the chain, so you will do the same with my Starbucks birthday cake pop copycat recipe.
You can try my Starbucks Rocky Road cake pops recipe in my book "Top Secret Recipes Step by Step".
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.