Taco Bell’s popular Cinnamon Twists are inspired by a traditional Mexican treat made by frying duros de harina until puffy, then sprinkling the crunchy spirals with cinnamon/sugar. Duros, or duritos, is a special pasta made with wheat flour and cornmeal or cornstarch that swells up in seconds in hot oil, transforming it into a light and crispy snack.

You can find duros in many shapes at Latin markets or online, but for this hack you want spirals that look like rotini. Most duros you find will likely be saltier and denser than what Taco Bell uses since the chain created a custom recipe for American palates.

It takes just 10 to 15 seconds for the pasta to puff up in the oil—it will be sudden and dramatic and the duros crisps will float to the top. When they do, gently poke at them, and stir them around in the hot oil until they are evenly cooked. It only takes about a minute to fry each batch.

Watch me make these tasty twists in this new video!

Find more of my Taco Bell copycat recipes here.

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.  

My new favorite caramel corn is from Popcornopolis. Its caramel coating is lighter in color and flavor than the dark molasses-heavy caramel coating on old-school caramel corn, like Cracker Jack. The flavor is more buttery, like butter toffee, with just a hint of molasses knocking at the back door.

To assemble this hack I worked with several versions of butter toffee candy, adding light brown sugar to bring in the molasses, and after several attempts finally landed on just the right combination of ingredients to best duplicate the flavor, color, and texture of the real thing.

You'll want a candy thermometer for this recipe for the best results, but if you don't have one you can estimate when the candy is done by using the time cue in the steps.

Vanilla is added at the end, so we don't cook out the flavor. You'll also add a little baking soda at the end, which will react with the acid in the molasses and create tiny air bubbles so the hardened candy has a more tender bite to it.

Check out our other candied popcorn clone recipes including Cracker Jack, Poppycock, Fiddle Faddle, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and Crunch 'n Munch. 

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.

Ultra-sour liquid candy in a spray bottle was first introduced to puckering mouths in Taiwan in 1975, and eventually came to the U.S. in 1993. The liquid candy is a simple formulation of sugar, flavoring, acids (for the sour), and glycerin. Once you have these ingredients, a home version is easy—just measure and stir. For your own ultra-tart spray candy hack, you’ll need six ingredients and three reusable small spray bottles.

The sourness in the real thing comes from citric acid and malic acid, both of which are natural ingredients found in fruits and vegetables. Malic acid is a more intense sour and can be found at Whole Foods or online, while citric acid can be found in many stores, including Walmart. If you can’t track down malic acid, you can still make the recipe with just citric acid (see Tidbits). The quality of the sour will be a little different, but I’m pretty sure no kids will be complaining about it.  

The candy is flavored with unsweetened Kool-Aid mix, which is great because there are so many flavors to choose from. The real Warheads come in watermelon, green apple, sour cherry, and blue raspberry, but the blue raspberry Kool-Aid also has lemonade in it, so that one won’t taste quite the same as the real one. 

To thicken your spray, you’ll need some glycerin. Glycerin—also a natural product—is developed from vegetable oil or animal fat and is often used in icing preparation. Glycerin helps thicken the liquid candy to make it more syrupy, and it also adds sweetness. You’ll find glycerin where cake decorating supplies are sold, or online. 

While you’re online, also look for three 2.7-ounce reusable spray bottles. That’s where I found mine. This recipe will fill each bottle all the way up, with a little left over for a partial refill.

Making candy is fun! Check out my recipe for Haribo Gummy Bears here.

At the 2018 Salvation Army National Doughnut Day World Doughnut Eating Contest, held every June 1^st, competitive eater Joey Chestnut consumed 257 Hostess powdered Donettes in six minutes to take home the top prize. There was a big smile on Joey's powdered-sugar-and-crumb-coated face that day as he raised a trophy to celebrate another glorious gastronomic feat.  

If you had to guess who makes the top-selling doughnuts in America, you’d probably say Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kreme, but you’d be wrong. According to Hostess, Donettes are the country’s most popular doughnuts—you rarely find a supermarket, corner market, or convenience store without at least a few packages on the shelf. Hostess Donettes come in several flavors, including chocolate, crumb, and strawberry, but the one most people turn to, and the one I grew up on (they were called “Gems” back then), is coated with a thick layer of powdered sugar.    

Cloning the Hostess powdered doughnuts recipe is not hard, once you know the secrets. You'll make a stiff cake dough, punch out 2-inch rounds with a biscuit cutter, pierce the dough with a straw or chopstick to make a hole, then fry the doughnuts for 2 minutes until golden brown. After you roll them in powdered sugar you'll have around 20 fresh, home-cloned miniature doughnuts that will make you feel like a kid again.

And—just doing a little math here—it would take Joey Chestnut all of about 14 seconds to eat that entire plate of doughnuts you just made.

The health concerns regarding microwave popcorn are a result of the way it’s packaged. For the corn to pop, the kernels are submerged in boiling fat inside the bag until a buildup of steam in the kernels causes them to burst. To prevent the liquid fat from seeping through, the bags are lined with a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid, which, unfortunately for microwave popcorn lovers, has been linked to cancer and other nasty things.

I set out on a mission to make better homemade microwave popcorn with only natural ingredients, and without using costly popping gadgets. I also wanted to avoid using plastic, tape, or metal, such as staples. My solution is a new method of prepping the kernels, but like many other techniques I researched, it requires paper lunch bags. I was dismayed to find some discussions about the potential for problems using brown paper bags in your microwave oven, such as fire, but I had absolutely no issues any of the many times I did it. No smoke, no sparks, nothing looking at all dangerous was going on inside my cooking box. The USDA states that using paper bags in your microwave, “may cause a fire, and may emit toxic fumes,” yet the internet is full of microwave popcorn recipes calling for paper bags. I chose to still share my recipe and technique, but ultimately leave it up to you to decide if it’s a hack recipe you feel safe using. If you’d rather stay on the safe side, see the Tidbits for an alternate technique. 

My hack starts with clarifying butter so that it’s pure fat, without any milk solids or water. Butter is about 16 percent water and if any of that stays in the mix, your popcorn will be on a fast trip to Soggytown. Once the butter is clarified, we’ll combine it with popcorn and salt and freeze it into pucks that can be saved for weeks until you are ready to make quick popcorn.

When it’s popcorn time, a puck goes into a small bowl, which goes inside two interlocking paper bags. After a warming session, you hit the “popcorn” button on your microwave oven and the popcorn will pop just like the store product (you may have to add another 30 seconds or so of cooking time). The first bag will soak up the excess butter that splashes around inside as the popcorn pops, and the second bag will keep the butter from messing up your oven.

To serve, pull the bags apart over a big bowl, and you’ll have a fresh batch of hot microwave popcorn coated perfectly with real butter and salt. 

If you're like me and you like things spicy, try sprinkling your popcorn with my original Hell Flakes to create what we like to call "Hell Corn".

The famous hard caramel candy created in 1903 in the German town of Werther is easy to duplicate at home as long as you’ve got a candy thermometer and some rounded silicone candy molds. Realistically, you can make these candies any shape you want (one time I made some in a gummy-bear mold!), but the best shape for hard candies is something smooth and rounded. That’s what works best for a candy designed to be sucked on, rather than chewed. Just be sure to get enough molds to hold 50 or more bite-size candies at once.      

This hack calls for fresh cream and butter just like the original, which was invented in Germany over 100 years ago and is now sold throughout Europe and North America. 

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

Recently, Hostess released a new “limited-edition” mint chocolate version of the brand’s famous CupCakes, with mint creamy filling and mint frosting on top. I had already hacked the well-known chocolate CupCakes from Hostess for Step-by-Step, so the cake recipe and the white icing on top was already done. I reworked the filling and the frosting with delicious mint flavor and proper green hue, and put it all together in this new hack that’s a twist on an old favorite.

As with the chocolate CupCakes clone, the frosting is designed to be runny so that you can dip the cupcakes in it. This will produce a smooth frosting that, when dry, looks just like the real thing. Most likely you’ll need a couple coats of frosting. The first coat is a crumb layer that locks in the chocolate cake crumbs so that the second layer finishes clean and smooth. If you find that you’re losing too many crumbs in the frosting bowl when dipping the cupcakes, you may want to spread on your first layer with a butter knife.   

Before baking be sure to grease your muffin cups well so that cupcakes come out clean. And you'll need a piping bag or pastry gun with a medium tip to fill the cupcakes and a small tip to add the seven loops of white icing on top. No proper clone of this famous product would be right without that final step.

Check out my clone recipes for Hostess Twiinkies and Powdered Donettes! 

Since the candy maker’s first milk chocolate bar debuted in 1900, just three other candy bars have carried the Hershey’s name. Hershey’s Special Dark came out in 1939 and Hershey’s Cookies and Crème was introduced in 1995. The third one—and the first to be made without any chocolate in it—is the new Hershey’s Gold Peanuts & Pretzels, which hit the shelves in late 2017.

The base of the bar is “caramelized crème” that Hershey’s claims is made by browning the sugar in white crème. I recalled a recipe for caramelizing white chocolate by slowly cooking it in the oven, stirring often, until it becomes golden brown. By mixing in a little creamy peanut butter and salt with the white chocolate before it goes in the oven, I created a perfect golden base to which crushed peanuts and pretzels could be added.

I poured the golden crème into candy bar molds and let them set in the fridge for 30 minutes. When I removed the candy from the molds it looked like it was made in a real candy bar factory, and it tasted like it too. I wrapped each in gold foil and felt like Willy Wonka.

If you don’t have candy bar molds for your candy bars, you can make the candy in a more old-fashioned, homemade style by pouring the cooked candy onto parchment paper or wax paper on a baking sheet and allowing it to cool. When it’s firm, break up the candy and store it in a covered container or a resealable bag.

Find more cool candy copycat recipes here. 

Hunt-Wesson first introduced a light variety of Swiss Miss Puddings in 1990, but three years later changed the formula to fat-free. This chocolaty clone of the rich pudding you find in the refrigerated section of the supermarket will satisfy your chocolate craving without any fat. The sweetened condensed milk helps to replace fat, and the cornstarch jumps in to keep the pudding thick and creamy. The two types of chocolate used here gives you an irresistible snack that tastes just like the original product. 

Nutrition Facts 
Serving size–3/4 cups 
Total servings–4 
Calories per serving–170 
Fat per serving–0g

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

When the first instant hot cocoa mix was developed in the fifties, it was available only to the airlines in individual portions for passengers and was called Brown Swiss. This mix was so popular that the company packaged it for sale in the grocery stores and changed the name to Swiss Miss. In the seventies, the first Swiss Miss Puddings were introduced and quickly became the leader of dairy case puddings. When the fat-free versions of the puddings were introduced some 23 years later, they too would become a popular favorite.

No sugar needs to be added to this recipe that recreates one of the best-tasting brands of fat-free pudding on the market. The condensed milk is enough to sweeten the pudding, plus it provides a creamy consistency to help replace fat found in the full-fat version of this tasty tapioca treat. 

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–3/4 cup
Total servings–4
Fat per serving–0g
Calories per serving–140

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur. 

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.

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. 

My previously published recipe hack of America's most popular rice pudding was not clear about which kind of rice to use. That's a problem because not all rice is created equal. The recipe calls for medium-grain rice but is not any more specific than that, which could lead to varying results in the consistency of the pudding since every rice has a different thickening ability.

I recently reworked this recipe using many different types of rice, including instant rice, converted rice, basmati rice, jasmine rice, calrose rice, arborio rice, and even sushi rice. Most didn't contain the starch needed to properly thicken the pudding, especially the par-cooked rice such as instant rice and converted rice. On the other end of the spectrum, sushi rice contained too much starch and was much too small.

The best of the bunch was jasmine rice, a long-grain rice, which thickened the pudding nicely after 45 minutes or so of simmering and appeared to be comparable in size to what is in the real thing. Jasmine rice plus five more ingredients are all it takes to make this new, improved clone.

And now there's no need for a cooking thermometer as required in my previous recipe, since you can just add the rice when you see the milk beginning to steam and keep the pudding at a low simmer until it's done. After about an hour, you'll have a Kozy Shack rice pudding copycat recipe that's ready to pop into the fridge until it’s cool, creamy, and ready to eat.

Also, check out my copycat recipe for Kozy Shack Tapioca Pudding.

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.

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.

You probably think the dark chocolaty stuff that looks like dark chocolate on a dark chocolate Kind nut bar is all chocolate, but it mostly isn’t. There is chocolate in there, but chicory root is listed third in the ingredients statement, right after peanuts and almonds and way before cocoa, so the dark chocolate is actually a chocolate-flavored coating made mostly with chicory root fiber. Curiously, older labels list “chocolate-flavored coating” as the second ingredient, but newer labels don’t.

Chicory is the root of the endive plant and it’s beloved in New Orleans, where it’s combined with coffee drinks because its taste is so similar to coffee. Chicory also happens to taste a lot like chocolate, and it’s cheaper than chocolate, and that’s probably why it’s used here.

But just because Kind uses chicory, doesn’t mean we have to. For our hack, we’ll use real chocolate in the form of melting wafers you can find in most stores. I used Ghirardelli brand because it tastes great, but any easy-to-melt, dippable dark chocolate will do.

The bars are stuck together with honey and agave syrup heated to 260 degrees F, or the hard ball stage. The sticky mixture is pressed into a 10x5-inch loaf pan, cooled, and sliced into 8 bars. The bottoms are dipped in the pure chocolate, and more is drizzled over the top. About 30 minutes later, when the chocolate sets up, your bars are ready to eat.

Do you like dipping things in chocolate? Check out more of my clone recipes here. 

In 1914 the founders of the Tasty Baking Company created "the cake that made Mother stop baking." Tastykake products remain popular today with millions of snack cakes shipping across the country every day. And the recipes have remained remarkably unchanged over the years. These chocolate cupcakes in several varieties are the company's top-selling item, with more than 7 million baked weekly.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Since it was founded in 1914, the Tasty Baking Company has continued to uphold its policy of controlled distribution to ensure freshness of its products. The company delivers only what it will sell promptly and removes cakes from the stores after just a few days in an effort to keep them from becoming stale.

As the years went by and delivery efficiency improved, transportation routes expanded from Philadelphia to new England, the Midwest, and the South. Mixing, baking, wrapping, and packaging of the products have changed from hand operations to sophisticated automated ones, cutting the production cycle from twelve hours to forty-five minutes.

Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes made their debut in the early 1930s as Tandy Takes. The name was eventually changed. Tastykake claims you could make almost 8 million peanut butter sandwiches with the quantity of peanut butter used in Kandy Kakes each year.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

In 1914 Pittsburgh baker Philip J. Baur and Boston egg salesman Herbert T. Morris decided there was a need for prewrapped, fresh cakes in local grocery stores. The two men coined the name Tastykake for their new treats and used only the finest ingredients, delivered fresh daily to their bakery.

The founders standards of freshness are maintained to this day. Tastykakes baked tonight are on the shelves tomorrow. That philosophy has contributed to substantial growth for the Tasty Baking Company. On its first day the firm's sales receipts totaled $28.32, and today the company boasts yearly sales of more that $200 million.

Among the top-selling Tastykake treats are the Butterscotch Krimpets, first created in 1927. Today, approximately 6 million Butterscotch Krimpets are baked every week.

Try my Peanut Butter Kandy Kake recipe here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur

At one point Mars, Inc. chose to capitalize on the company's best-selling candy bar, and called this one Snickers Munch Bar. I think that may have been confusing to consumers who expected to open the wrapper and find something inside resembling a Snickers bar. Other than the abundance of peanuts in this butter toffee brittle, this candy bar is nothing like Snickers. It is, however, an awesome peanut brittle that's super-easy to clone. The original is made with only six ingredients: peanuts, sugar, butter, corn syrup, salt, and soy lecithin. The soy lecithin is an emulsifier used here for texture, but this ingredient is hard to find, and we really don't need it for a good clone. Use a candy thermometer to bring the mixture of sugar, butter, and corn syrup up to 300 degrees F, then stir in warmed, salted peanuts. When the candy has cooled, break it into chunks and you will have created the equivalent of 12 bars of the addicting original. 

Satisfy your candy craving with more of my copycat candy recipes here. 

The first Top Secret Recipes book features a version of this clone recipe for America's most beloved candy creation, and the recipe is posted all over the place. But since 1993, I've learned a few things about Reese's Peanut Butter Cup cloning. Now, when you make this Reese's Peanut Butter Cups recipe, it's better to use reduced-fat peanut butter for a texture that's drier and crumblier like the original. Also, use scissors to trim paper muffin cups so that they are shallower—and a better mold for your clone.  

Video: How to clone a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in 3 minutes.

Want to make more candy at home? See if I cloned your favorites here. 

Source: Top Secret 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 coffee cake without coffee? Find your favorite Starbucks drink recipes here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

This oddly name popcorn confection gets its yellow color from the butter-flavored popcorn beneath the nearly clear candy coating. We'll use microwave popcorn for this low-fat version, and we'll throw in some real butter and butter flavoring for just the right touch. With this secret formula, we can duplicate the taste of the original with only half the fat.

Check out some of our other clones for Fiddle Faddle, Poppycock, Cracker Jack, and Crunch N' Munch. 

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 cup
Total servings–12
Calories per serving–107 (Original–140)
Fat per serving–2g (Original–4g)

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

A fork is no longer necessary to eat cake with this clone of 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 cloned here, birthday cake, which celebrates Starbucks’ 40th anniversary. The pops are each made by hand for the chain just as you will now create this delicious Starbucks birthday cake pop recipe.

In 1871 a German immigrant named F. W. Rueckheim came to Chicago with $200 in his pocket. He used all of his money to open a small popcorn shop in the city and started selling a sweet caramel-and-molasses-coated popcorn confection. Rueckheim's big break came in 1893, when the treat was served at Chicago's first world's fair. From then on the popcorn's popularity grew enormously. In 1896 a salesman tasting the treat for the first time said, "That's a cracker jack," and the name stuck. Shortly after Cracker Jacks debut another customer commented, "The more you eat, the more you want," and that's still the slogan today.

In 1912 the Cracker Jack Company started adding toy surprises, ranging from small books to miniature metal toy trains. To date they have given away more than 17 billion toy surprises. In 1964 Borden, Inc. bought the Cracker Jack Company, and today the Cracker Jack division is the largest user of popcorn in the world, popping more than twenty tons of corn a day. 

Check out my clones for Fiddle Faddle, Poppycock, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and Crunch N' Munch. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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.

For many years now, the monocled Mr. Peanut has been Planters nutty pitchman. The character was created in 1916 by a Virginia schoolboy, Anthony Gentile, who won $5 in a contest for drawing a "little peanut person." A commercial artist later added the top hat, cane, and monocle to make Mr. Peanut the stuffy socialite that he is today. But the character has not always been in the limelight. Planters adman Bill McDonough says, "Though Mr. Peanut has always been identified with the brand, over the years he has been dialed up or down to different degrees." In 1999, the company dialed up the polite-and-proper legume to capitalize on nostalgia for the older folks and the young buyers' craving for retro chic.

Even though we think of Planters as the "nut company" you won't find a single nut, with or without monocle, in the fat-free version of Planters popular Fiddle Faddle. All you need to whip together this clone is a good low-fat microwave popcorn and a few other common ingredients. This recipe requires your microwave to help coat the popcorn with a thin, crunchy coating of the tasty candy mixture. Even though there is a small amount of fat in the recipe, it still comes out to less than 1 gram of fat per serving, so the final product can be called "fat-free."

Check out some of our other clones for Cracker Jack, Poppycock, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and Crunch N' Munch. 

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 cup
Total servings–12
Calories per serving–114
Fat per serving–0g

Source: Low-Fat 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.

Founded in 1914 by Harry Brown and J.C. Haley in Tacoma, Washington, the Brown and Haley Candy Company is one of the oldest confectioners in the country. In 1923 the company hit the jackpot when Harry Brown and the former cook from what would eventually become the Mars candy company, created a chocolate-coated butter toffee candy, sprinkled with California almonds. They took the sweet to Tacoma's head librarian, and she named it Almond Roca—roca means "rock" in Spanish. In 1927 the two men decided to wrap the little candies in imported gold foil and pack them into the now-familiar pink cans to extend their shelf life threefold. In fact, because of the way the candy was packaged, it was carried by troops in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War.

The Brown and Haley candy company is still housed in the former shoe factory that it has occupied since 1919. Almond Roca is so popular today that it can be found in sixty-four countries and is a market leader in Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan. The company sells more than 5 million pounds of Almond Roca each year and is the United States leading exporter of packaged confections. 

Click here for more of my copycat recipes of famous candy.

Source: Top Secret Recipes 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.

The beginning of the graham cracker goes back to the early 1800s when Sylvester Graham thought his new invention was the secret to a lifetime of perfect health, even sexual prowess—certainly extraordinary claims for a cracker. But this came from the man thought to be quite a wacko in his time, since he had earlier claimed that eating ketchup could ruin your brain. So, while his crispy whole wheat creation was not the cure for every known ailment, the sweet crackers still became quite a fad, first in New England around the 1830s and then spreading across the country. Today, graham crackers remain popular as a low-fat, snack-time munchable, and, most notably, as the main ingredient in smores.

You don't need to use graham flour for this recipe, since that stuff is similar to the whole wheat flour you find in your local supermarket. Just pick your favorite variety among these three clones of Nabisco's most popular crackers, and be sure to roll out the dough paper thin.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–2 crackers
Total servings–22
Calories per serving–120
Fat per serving–3g

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)

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.

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

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

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.

In 1992 Fortune magazine estimated the Mars family's personal worth at somewhere around $12.5 billion. This solid foundation of wealth, built on the country's undying passion for chocolate and other sweets, has made this clan the richest family in America—and the most reclusive. A family rule prohibits photographs to be taken of the Mars family and corporate executives. According to Fortune, a photographer who once tried to get a shot of Forrest Mars, Sr., found himself enveloped in a cloth that was thrown as he was about to snap the picture. 

The fortune grew steadily larger as the corporation routinely kept four brands in the top-ten-selling chocolates in the country: Milky Way, M&M's Plain and Peanut, and, in the number-one spot, Snickers.

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

Check out my other clone recipes for famous candy bars here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

At the train station in Naugatuck, Connecticut, candy and ice-cream shop owner Peter Paul Halajian used to meet the commuter trains carrying baskets full of fresh hand-made chocolates. The most popular of his candies was a blend of coconut, fruits, nuts, and chocolate that he called Konabar.

In 1919, when demand for his confections grew, Halajian and five associates, all of Armenian heritage, opened a business in New Haven to produce and sell his chocolates on a larger scale. Because there were no refrigerators, they made the chocolate by hand at night, when the air was the coolest, and sold the candy during the day. In 1920 the first Mounds bar was introduced.

Peter Paul merged with Cadbury U.S.A. in 1978, and in 1986 Cadbury U.S.A. merged with the Hershey Foods Corporation, now the world's largest candy conglomerate.

Today the recipes for Peter Paul's Mounds and Almond Joy are the same as they were in the roaring twenties.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The Mars Milky Way bar was the first chocolate-covered candy bar to find widespread popularity in the United States. It was developed in 1923 by the Mars family, and became so successful so quickly that the company had to build a new manufacturing plant in Chicago just to keep up with demand.

Youll need a heavy-duty mixer for this recipe.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Nougat is an important ingredient in the 3 Musketeers Bar, as well as in many other candy bars created by Mars. Nougat is made by mixing a hot sugar syrup with whipped egg whites until the solution cools and stiffens, creating a frappe. Other ingredients may be added to the nougat during this process to give it different flavors. In this recipe, you'll add chocolate chips to create a dark, chocolaty nougat.

But the 3 Musketeers Bar wasn't always filled with just a chocolate nougat. In fact, when the candy bar was created back in 1932, it was actually three pieces with three flavors: vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. After World War II, the product was changed to a single chocolate bar because that was the favorite flavor, and customers wanted more of it. Thankfully they didn't change the name to 1 Musketeer.

You'll need a heavy-duty electric mixer for this recipe.

Check out more of my candy bar clone recipes here. 

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

What started in Tacoma, Washington, in 1911 as a small home-based candy shop has now grown to be one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Mars products are found in more than 100 countries, and the Mars family pulls in revenues in the range of a sweet $11 billion each year.

The Mars Almond Bar was first produced in 1936, when it was known as the Mars Toasted Almond Bar. It was reformulated in 1980 and the name was changed to Mars Bar. In 1990 it was renamed once again, becoming Mars Almond Bar.

You'll need a heavy-duty mixer to handle the nougat in this recipe.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The streets of New York City are peppered with Nuts 4 Nuts vendors selling freshly candied nuts that you can smell a block away. For a buck or two you get your choice of warm, sugar-coated almonds, peanuts, or cashews wrapped up in a little paper bag with the corners twisted closed. The nuts are candied right there on the carts in a large metal bowl over a heating element. When the nuts are added to sugar and water they are stirred vigorously until the water evaporates and the sugar crystallizes into a crunchy coating, without burning. They're easy to make on the street, which means they're even easier to clone at home. All you need for your own quick version of this addictive street snack is 1 1/2 cups of your favorite raw nuts, some sugar, a little water, and a hot saucepan, and you're about 4 minutes away from an authentic New York City treat. The recipe works best in a pan that isn't nonstick, and the nuts must be raw. The oil added to roasted nuts prevents the sugar from properly crystallizing. Use this recipe with pecans or walnuts, and then sprinkle them over fresh spinach or baby greens, along with a little goat cheese or Gorgonzola and some diced apple or pear for an easy gourmet side salad.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

In 1996, Nabisco built up its growing line of SnackWell's baked products with the introduction of low-fat snack bars in several varieties, including fudge brownie, golden cake, apple raisin, and the chewy banana variety cloned here. The secret ingredient that keeps the fat grams under 2 grams per serving is banana puree, which makes the cake moist while adding real banana flavor. The egg whites rather than whole eggs, molasses and just a little bit of shortening also help maintain flavor and moistness, without too much added fat. Whip it all up, pour it into a pan and bake. Soon you'll have 21 tasty little low-fat snack bars to get you through the week, guilt-free.

Click here for more Nabisco copycat recipes.

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size–1 bar
Servings–21
Calories per serving–118
Fat per serving–1.8g

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

This Nebraska-based company grows a special kind of yellow mushroom popcorn that pops into fluffy round shapes for all its brands of candy-coated popcorn—Fiddle Faddle, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and Poppycock—but plain microwave popcorn is all you'll need to make an easy clone. The Poppycock motto is "It's our amazing glaze!" and it is pretty amazing. The butter-toffee glaze is flavored with maple syrup, and each box is packed with lots of nuts, unlike any other glazed popcorn brands out there. Clone the Poppycock flavor you prefer: all cashews, all pecans, or a combination of almonds and pecans. Of course, you can mix in any nuts you like, salted or unsalted, as long as it comes to two cups worth for example—macadamia nuts is an great variation. You really need a candy thermometer for this recipe to get it just right, but you can also estimate temperature by drizzling some of the candy syrup into a glass of cold water once you see it begin to darken. If the candy forms brittle threads, it's ready. You coat the popcorn with the glaze by heating everything up in the microwave and stirring. There is also a technique using your oven (see Tidbits), but the microwave method is faster. 

Check out some of our other clones for Fiddle Faddle, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Cracker Jack, and Crunch N' Munch. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

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.

Nabisco unveiled a line of reduced-fat products in 1992 with the introduction of SnackWell's Devil's Food cookie cakes. The product was an instant hit with demand quickly outstripping supply, leaving store shelves empty. The company poked fun at the situation with a series of humorous TV spots, featuring the dweebish "Cookie Man" hounded by pushy shoppers trying to get their hands on his cookies. The successful product launch was followed with the introduction of dozens of new SnackWell's products through the years, including Apple Raisin Snack Bars. Our clone uses a secret combination of unsweetened applesauce along with molasses and apple juice to keep the cake moist and tasty.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 bar
Total servings–21
Calories per serving–120
Fat per serving–1.7g

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

Nabisco took great effort to produce reduced-fat versions of the most popular products created by the food giant. This product loyalty-retaining move is just good business. According to one Nabisco spokesperson, "We want to bring back the people who have enjoyed our products, but went away for health and diet reasons." And that's exactly what we see happening, as customers are now grabbing the boxes with "Less Fat" printed on them. This box says, "Reduced fat: 40% less fat than original Cheese Nips."

The secret ingredient for this clone of the popular little square crackers is the fat-free cheese sprinkles by Molly McButter. One 2-ounce shaker of the stuff will do it, and you won't use it all. Just keep in mind that cheese powder is pretty salty, so you may want to go very easy on salting the tops of the crackers 

Nutrition Facts 
Serving size–31 crackers 
Total servings–about 10 
Fat per serving–3.5g 
Calories per serving–105

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

Here's a clone recipe that gets one very important ingredient from another packaged product. The powdered cheese included in the Kraft instant macaroni & cheese kits flavors this homegrown version of the popular bright orange crackers. You'll need a can of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese cheese topping or two boxes of the most inexpensive instant variety of macaroni & cheese—you know, the kind with the cheese powder. Two boxes will give you enough cheese to make 300 crackers. As for the macaroni left over in the box, just use that for another recipe requiring elbow macaroni.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.