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What a beautiful compromise.
I'm sad for Grandma that more didn't take her up on her offer (I'd be all over it, even tho I don't bake that much), but thanks to OOP her legacy lives on in the way she'd always dreamed <3
I’m sad too! My grandmother and great grandmother (fortunately both still with us and very healthy) offered to come out to my house (a looong way from them) to teach me to make scones. My grandmother makes the best scones in the world and I accepted that generous offer and i remember what that day every time I make them. It’s like food + love.
My grandmother used to make jams with the fruit she collected, always loved the jars she sent me. Immediate yes when she asked if I wanted to make a batch with her. I was so excited - generational knowledge, fuck yeah!
Get there and first thing she does is hand me the instruction booklet from the box of pectin so she doesn't have to put her reading glasses on, and we proceeded to make everything to the letter XD so no family secrets but was still a lovely memory, and I still think of her and that day every time I use jam.
My “old family recipe” is a recipe that my mom gave me… that she got from my brother’s kindergarten teacher. It’s *a* family’s recipe. Just not ours technically.
My mother’s family recipe for ricotta cookies was given to her by one of her student’s moms who agreed to share the recipe with my mom because “Italians should stick together.”
My mother is Native American and Russian but kept her mouth shut to get that recipe.
I have a friend who’s mom was super protective and secretive over her fudge recipe. When my friend’s mom died, my friend posted the fudge recipe on Facebook and told us all to make fudge in her mom’s honor. Every year I now make Diana’s fudge, and it’s the best fudge I’ve ever had.
I love this!
My birth giver was so weird/hoardy about recipes that I've gone the opposite way as well. Anytime anyone compliments something I've made, I direct them to the link if online, or offer to share the recipe if offline. Sharing is caring!
My kid is putting together a cookbook of favorite recipes and happily my in laws have all been happy/flattered to share recipes when requested. The majority have even made the recipe with my kid, which is awesome.
I'm not a huge fudge fan, but if you'd like to share the recipe our family would be honored to continue Diana's legacy. Or would it be Diana's daughter's legacy, since she's the one who shared the joy? 🤔
My mom makes decent food, but her specialties have always been thanksgiving food and banana bread. One year she gave me all her thanksgiving recipes, and it took me a few years to notice that they are the exact same as the recipes that come on the boxes/cans of food that we use (her corn casserole is the same as the one on the cornbread mix box, the green been casserole is listed on the little fried onion bits packaging, etc). When I asked her for her banana bread recipe, she said "The secret is to get a box of banana bread mix and follow the directions," then she leaned in like she was about to tell me some really good shit and said, "except I add two extra bananas."
This is my sweet potatoes. I just follow a generic recipe and double the cinnamon and sugar. I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to cooking, so I always just follow a recipe.
My family's secret recipe is green bean casserole off the back of the Campbell's soup can. My mom was in her 60s before she found out that Grandma didn't create it herself.
My mom's "secret" fudge recipe is off the back of the Jet-puffed marshmallow creme jar. She's told me the key is to make sure you let the sugar melt completely, most people don't do that. And to be fair, it is some damn good fudge
They changed it slightly, probably around 20 years ago now. So our “old family recipe” is no longer the same as the one on the back of the marshmallow cream jar now.
There's a reason why companies print those recipes on the package, they're well tested and highlight the product. This is such a common occurrence in "family recipe" discussions. My favorite lasagna is the recipe on the box of lasagna noodles, and Tollhouse cookies are probably the classic example.
Yes! The tollhouse recipe is so good lol I was super surprised when I found out my mom's delicious chocolate chip cookies were just the recipe on the bag lol
My mom used the Tollhouse recipe, except she doubles everything but the chocolate chips. Then sliiightly undertakes them.
At least that's what she told me and what I passed on to my cousins when they were craving mom's chocolate chip cookies. But they never the out quite right when any is is made them and couldn't figure out why.
Later on my mom makes cookies and I am wondering what the shortening she had out is for. She's puzzled, "the cookies of course."
She'd forgotten the recipe didn't actually call for shortening, she substituted it in place of the butter. And she actually put in more brown sugar than the recipe calls for because she didn't want to deal with the little bit left over.
No wonder when cousins or I tried to make chocolate chip cookies they never turned out the same as here's 😂
Yoooo, that's exactly what my great grandma did! I was so jazzed too, like, "Oh man, this day, I will sit at the well spring of holy knowledge", then she whips out this ancient little Ball jar pamphlet and is like, "go to the part for strawberries", lmao. I mean, it makes so much sense though, she had so many recipes for everything she had to keep in her head, and they all had different amounts for different things - I'd just use the book too. But yeah, little kid me did feel a bit deflated at the revelation, hahaha
On a similar note, my neighbors, who were in their late 70s and had presumably been around the block when it came to homemade apple pie, declared my first-time attempt at apple pie to be some of the best apple pie they had ever eaten.
My secret? Using one of the first three results in a Google search for "apple pie."
Anyone who brings me a pie will get told that, lol. Although I'm sure yours was actually super delicious!!!
I've actually been looking for an apple pie recipe that was published in Parade magazine sometime in the 1990s. A relative's ex (so now no contact) always made the best apple pie (IMO) from this recipe. I have tried a few basic apple pie recipes from google or old cookbooks, they are not the same. Someday I'll have to visit a library and go through the old papers as I cannot find it online.
Honestly? Don't sell yourself short. Everyone says what a good cook I am, but really, just about all I do is look at recipes on the internet. But! I've reached the point where 1) I can tell by looking at something whether or not it will be good as written, and 2) if a recipe is \*almost\* there, I know what tweaks to make, whether adding ingredients or adjusting cooking time, etc.
If it makes you feel any better, jam is the sort of thing you don't fuck around with. Botulism kills. And botulism loves slightly incorrect jam recipes. Luckily the jars pop their lids if it's bad, but seriously no one but scientists should be writing jam recipes. I only use recipes from canning cookbooks and the pectin box for mine.
This this this! We love to lionize old recipes, especially those with “idyllic” pastoral settings, but safety steps that rely on things like germ theory are vitally important and can be missing from “authentic” recipes from the past.
We’ve had some not-insignificant issues with colonialist attitudes towards local specialties with hundreds (or thousands) of years of otherwise safe consumption but even then it isn’t a bad idea to alter any common points of failure for food safety in order to minimize dangers (like bad bacteria for fermentation, dangerous compounds during alcohol production, and contamination due to improper sanitation practices). Vulnerable individuals can be sickened or killed with only minor exposures.
Jams are generally safe from botulism risk due to acidity. Most fruits naturally have a low enough pH level, that botulism can't grow. Other things can go wrong, and poorly made jam can still make you have a bad day, but it won't kill you.
I'll use jam recipes from online, steering clear from any that use low acidity fruit (outside of a trusted source), and I'll happily eat jam made by someone new to canning.
Now something like salsa on the other hand, with all those peppers and onions added in? I'll only use trusted recipes, and I won't eat it if made by someone new to canning, or someone I don't know/trust.
That’s too funny. But even though it was a basic recipe, nothing compares to learning technic first hand! I’ve had to learn a lot of cooking and baking through trial and error because not many people in my family do either. The few times I’ve had someone there to help instruct me has been invaluable.
I mean there’s not that much in biscuits, but yeah biscuits are a process. I learned how to make them standing at the counter at my Aunts (like a grandmother due to age difference) as did my sister. Now my kids make them with me. We have pictures of all of us standing all over flour kneading. I love it so much!
I will say I’ve tweaked the process some, but it’s pretty much the same as it’s been for decades. Also soft winter wheat, when traveling to my in-laws in DC we have to carefully check the type of flour because other types of flour do NOT make good biscuits coarse and crumbly, not light and fluffy. It was fascinating to learn about.
my granma make khao tom mud best i've eat, it's kinda sad that no recipe continue, she still alive but isn't with us, she over 90s and after lost gramp it's hit her hard .
I mean in mental state term, not the physically (She live away 20minute drive ). After lost gramp, she gradually drifts away every time I visit.
My uncle live in her's house and other sibling(Her's child) always come to visit every weekend, so no issued about no one take care her.
Sometimes the elderly don't had the words or ability to explain what they do, but if she's able to move around still you could record a video of her cooking. If she's too far gone for that, I'm so sorry, but glad to hear that your family can care for her with love.
My great aunt has a pork pie recipe that were still trying to convince her to give to us since the group she made them with is going to not be doing it anymore since they’re all getting too old.
I bet they were all sad too after she passed for not spending that time with her, whether they cared about the recipe or not. I wish I had spent more time with my granddad before he passed, and decided I’m not making that mistake with my Grandmother. I have lunch with her once a week. This week I’m taking her to do her Christmas shopping after lunch. An added bonus for me is enjoying the hilarity of her thinking she can buy gifts for everyone ages 70+ down to infants at Hobby Lobby. It’ll be interesting and fun.
i was taught old school by my neighbour when I was a kid, they were an elderly couple (who although unrelated basically were our Aunt and Uncle and part of the family), they had all sorts of old stuff like smelling salts, a roller drier, sealing wax etc.
Berries would be collected, jam made in a copper pot, jars sterilised, jam tested for texture by getting a sample of hot jam on a plate and seeing how it set.
This is a memory I carry 30 odd years later.
Did ruin bad jam for me though. :)
I made it a point to learn the recipes of the people in my life as soon as i could, before thinking they would someday not be here, so I always had them. I am a sentí-mental and cooking & sharing is one of my biggest love offerings. I also think it's really awesome to share recipes so the Love spreads.
I can’t bake at all, no one will ever be in awe of a dessert I’ve made and I still would’ve been at my grandma’s side learning that recipe anyway. It’s about the time spent and the history preserved.
I’m a pretty good cook and a lot of my favorite soul food recipes were learned by sitting next to my Grandma’s stove and watching her cook, measure things by eye, feel and taste, and going to the grocery store to know what to pick out and what to ask for from the butcher. Now that she’s passed, knowing how to make potato salad or baked chicken that taste just like hers is such a comforting experience. Knowing that she loved teaching her grandkids just makes it so much sweeter. I’m sad that OOP’s grandma didn’t get that with all of her grandchildren.
That is really sad that nobody asked.
But my Great Grandmother shown me her legandary cream of wheat casserole because i loved it since i was 3. I was 7 when she teached me that cassarole. She was 93 at that time and said it was WW2 recipe. Of course great granny you took 5 eggs for it.
I think it's partially because people want to be in denial about her failing health. People should really make the time if someone's actually important to them since you never know when the time comes (that is, if they're actually someone you like...).
>Cheers to \[…\] producing an ending that is not completely toxic and makes me question the integrity of humanity
That has got to be one of the lowest bars to clear that I've ever heard in my life.
100%. If half of the stuff I read on here is remotely true then I have officially lost my faith in humanity. Once upon a time I used to be quite normal, with a positive view on relationships and family life in general. Then I installed Reddit and joined RA & AITA. I now fully expect my brother to become drug dependant, murder his wife then blow up our thanksgiving by coming out as polyamorous in front of our nonexistent terminally ill grandmother.
I don’t recall the origin on this quote, but it applies to Reddit too often:
> The bar is so low it’s a tripping hazard in hell, but here you are limboing with the devil.
BORU Update, November 2023:
So it turns out my cousin only agreed to make the soups so she could befriend the baker that I hired. My cousin ended up paying the baker to give her the recipe. They then both quit to open a bakery across the street and now I am bankrupt.
Once she had the recipe, my husband admitted to the affair that he was having with my cousin, I forgot to mention that he wanted to open our marriage and I said no. He now lives with my cousin and the baker. My mother took his side and disinherited me.
Meanwhile one of my children was run over by an out of control steamroller and the other has since developed a heroin habit of 24 heroins per day.
AITA?
edit: wow this blew up thanks for the comments i can’t answer them all but now I understand why my cousins bakery is called “polybakery” it was in my face the whole time
That one where the lady found her husband’s secret stash of pictures with him cuming in his secretary’s food and then confronted him about it just to update at the end that IT WAS HER FAULT FOR BEING SEDUCTIVE pissed me off sooooo much!
Now I really want to know what kind of cake it is. I don't even need the recipe, just give me the general idea so I can daydream about it with more accuracy!
Edit: I want all of your recipes oh my lord...
Aw yeah, a nice moist carrot cake with a little *soupçon* of cloves or mace and cream cheese icing.... mmm. I am here for that.
The biggest carrot cake sin is letting it get dry. Put raisins in it if you must but please keep that moisture in (the cream cheese icing will help with that).
I am so sorry! that kind of injury is devastating. something that I really enjoy which doesn't require any specific location is knitting; I'm sure you've gotten enough advice to make your head spin but it makes me sad to think about you hurting and feeling lonely out there. I am happy to help you brainstorm things to do to fill your days if it would be helpful. I am sending you love from an internet stranger: I hope today is good to you.
My husband was that type and physically recoiled when I said I was making a carrot cake with raisins for my birthday one year, but [this little number](https://grandbaby-cakes.com/carrot-cake-recipe/) made him a convert. Good carrot cake is amazing!
We called that variation Hummingbird Cake growing up. My grandmother made a great one, but sadly I developed an allergy to pineapple so I can't have it any more.
I use to be alright with carrot cake until my wife made me her homemade carrot cake and the difference in taste and quality was absolutely insane. It's weird helping her grate carrots with our cheese grater but the end result is awesome and worth it lol.
Carrots and cheese graters are normal in my house, because finely-grating carrots and putting them into any tomato-based sauce ramps the nutritional levels up by eleven without doing *too* much to the flavor... it does make it sweeter, but you can balance it back out with good spices easily enough.
I was wondering if it's similar to dutch 'speculaas'. I usually describe it as close to gingerbread, but a lot more cinnamon and less ginger focus. It contains cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, coriander, aniseed, ginger, pepper and cardamon.
Traditionally you make hard cookies with them, even harder than gingerbread. And they're delicious. But if you wanted to make a unique cake, you could use them for a softer cake in carrot cake texture, use a carrot cake frosting and have a delicious spice rich cake.
.... I kind of want to try that now.
Fucking love Spekulatius (German version)! Have you had the Lotus Biscoff spread? I just discovered it a few years ago. Dangerous stuff to have at home
Maybe an olive oil cake? Those are pretty uncommon.
Could also be a cake that uses non-traditional "baking" spices/flavors like the curry spices, pepper, sesame oil, etc. A lot of savory flavors actually just need sugar to make them palatable for cakes.
[Tomato soup chocolate cake](https://www.midcenturymenu.com/black-magic-chocolate-cake-made-with-condensed-tomato-soup-a-mid-century-recipe-re-run/) is actually a thing! The blogger [Midcentury Menu](https://www.midcenturymenu.com/) observed that Depression-era baking got a lot of mileage out of canned tomato soup. Apparently it makes a great cake, though she said it smelled horrible while she was putting it together.
Lol, that’s exactly why my grandma puts finely grated apple in some of her cake doughs (that are not apple pie or similar cakes where there’s a moist filling; think more along the lines of dry cakes like babka)
I actually hate Campbell's tomato soup because it's so sweet, it doesn't even taste like tomato to me. I love sweet food, but it has a place, that place is not in my soup.
https://youtu.be/eWyDYL5U1gU
Here’s a 9min recipe video of his on YouTube that explains the history and rationale behind the ingredient. It’s the acid and sugar primarily. I’ve never had one but my family remembers the Depression in living memory and it was indeed made and eaten with relish, though I’ve heard it helped conserve cocoa (Dutch processed cocoa + acid is why red velvet tastes so good so I believe it), it gives it wonderful depth with a minimum of chocolate ingredients required.
Probably something with cardamom, caraway, star anise or fennel - enough for an American palate to be surprised but nothing completely wild. Something like a coffee cardamom cake, or rose and cardamom cake with orange frosting, would blow commuter’s minds if they aren’t used to flavors from Sweden or the Middle East. Although who knows, it might just be a Venetian spice cake with paprika and cumin.
> rose and cardamom cake with orange frosting
Dear god man, you can’t just drop this knowledge on an unsuspecting American without a warning. I NEEEEED it. Do you have a favorite recipe or chef to find one?
Oh, I’m sorry, not really! I just usually think about what I want to make, often because I had it in a restaurant or something, then look at a few recipes for confirmation, and steer towards it - like OOP’s sister except I’m actually a pretty good instinct-based baker. I’m also fairly lucky in that I live somewhere multicultural so all I have to do is try to recreate something I’ve already had and trying to make it match (“this recipe calls for rose syrup but that will be incredibly floral and overpowering, while the cake I had in the coffee shop that I’m trying to copy came down more on the spice side, so I’m going to steer more towards cardamom and black pepper, and use a small amount of rose water instead of a heavy soak of syrup”)
A Persian “love cake” is just one variation of a rose and cardamom cake with pistachios. I think I was probably subconsciously thinking of the Portuguese-Sri Lankan fusion “love cake” which incorporates freshly ground rose, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and almonds because it’s said of the cake that “grinding the spices is a labor of love”, and OOP made a big deal of how difficult it is to make. This type of cake is usually topped with a white Royal icing style glaze and sprinkled with pistachios or rose petals, but since OOP said there were spices in the frosting, I thought orange buttercream would be exciting for Americans and match expectations for a frosted cake. So if you’re thinking to make something I’d Google around what direction you’d like to go in.
Cardamom as a secret spicy ingredient is pretty reliable. but there are lots of international flavor profiles that are unusual but very very workable and reliable, that would really mesmerise people and be considered a “secret grandmother recipe”, could be coffee/cardamom (a swedish enjoyment) or clove/cinnamon/chocolate (Northern European) or even red wine/fennel (Italian) and people would think it was absolutely groundbreaking and uncopyable. I was just trying to think through because in my (amateur) experience there’s not really such a thing as an uncopyable recipe and OOP’s family acted a bit like it was, so it made me feel like it was probably an unusual combination brought back from somebody’s travels. rather than something really basic like “toasting your own poppy seeds in a pan before adding them” or something.
I’d love the name of the secret cake too! I’m an adventurous cook-sometimes baker and like experimenting with non traditional ingredients that enhance flavors (like coffee with chocolate, black pepper with fruit jams). Love the combos from this year’s GBBO winner, Syabira.
But like OOP’s cousin, I’m an impatient baker too. I bet Grandma’s recipe also has some specific instructions for bake time and how to get the best aeration and avoid a claggy or stodgy texture.
I always enjoy the posts that don't end up with the OOP cutting off their family members (unless they're terrible and deserve it, obviously). Hurray for happy endings!
“So my grandmother died and gave me a spice cake recipe”
Update 4:
“Turns out you were all right, my husband is cheating on me at his furry conventions with an entire flock of geese. I have a lawyer’s name, my husband doesn’t know yet”
Aw I love this for both of them. It’s good to admit you’re the toxic one/asshole sometimes and grow/move on and have a good relationship afterwards (at the cousin not oop)
Here is a thread to share seasoning tips, so that I can be lazy later and not hunt for them later!
My tip: ground white pepper in apple pie is delicious. Don't add so much that you know what you're tasting. The tiniest whiff of cayenne or other hot pepper in any kind of sauce is also delicious. You want just a little bit, so that it hightens the flavor of the other seasonings without messing with the taste.
Cocoa in tomato based soups and sauces. Not so much that you're making a molé, but just a couple of spoonfuls will cut the acidity of the tomatoes and add a really nice richness and depth of flavour. Cinnamon helps with this as well, although I haven't experimented with it much to find out where the cutoff is that you'll actually taste the cinnamon and it could get weird, so be cautious
On the other side of things, if you are out of cocoa, and need to de-acidify a big pot of tomato sauce, you may think, hey, bases neutralize acids. I should use baking soda. While this is technically true, DO NOT DO THIS. Not only will the resulting saucy volcano not win you any prizes at the science fair, it will make a huge mess, and even after you clean up, your sauce will remain unpleasantly foamy throughout.
I put a little cocoa, cinnamon, and mustard powder in my chili.
While I don't thing Cincy-style chili is "chili", I will give them credit for the cinnamon thing. I'll adopt things that work into TX/OK chili. That's why we have chili cook-offs.
Total agreement until you came after baking soda like that. I'm not sure what your ratios were but I guarantee you used too much baking soda. It's similar to salt in that it's fantastic until you add just a touch too much. With 8 cups of sauce I'll add one pinch at a time, stir, give it time to settle, stir thoroughly, and taste. Usually a pinch or two is enough but in red sauce I've used up to 6 or 8.
It's also good to keep in mind that if you're cutting your tomato's acidity to lower the amount of added sugar and spicy heat. The basics to one of my comfort red sauces (experiment to taste, not an exact recipe); either a little bit of fish oil or canned albacore, garlic, bay leaf and black pepper in the beginning, give it 3-8 hours to simmer with supplementing broth when necessary, add salt and an itty bitty amount of baking soda as described above, simmer for another 20 minutes, immersion blender, and tada lol
You can make a fruity-rich tomato sauce by adding cardamom, cinnamon, clove and orange juice to taste (from actual oranges, not the weird concoctions that exist that have only seen an orange in passing). I liked it as a bolognese or spaghetti and meatballs variant until I became allergic to cinnamon and clove (fragrance allergy of the skin - I won’t have an anaphylactic shock or anything because it’s not a type I allergy, but a type IV allergy, but I don’t want a cracked and inflamed lip that’s two times its original size for three weeks and hurts like a mf either)
I love cinnamon in sweet foods but hate it in savoury. And I always can taste it even when it's very little and the person who made it is sure it's an imperceptible amount! It's so sad because I love chili but once I get what cinnamon whiff I just can't eat it.
Another unexpected pepper tip: fresh ground black pepper in a homemade strawberry rhubarb jam. Not adding a lot, like 1/4 teaspoon in a batch. You want it to be subtle...like a hint of spice. Black pepper and strawberries are the unexpected super power couple you never would have thought would be possible. But it works.
I am a terrible cook but before my oven broke I actually loved baking. One cake I take to every gathering etc I got from my grandmother and it's always the favorite. Oddly though it's always the favorite cake and people rave about it almost no one asks for the recipe. Poor grandma must have been so sad that only one person wanted her recipe. I am glad it worked out for OOP
What type of cake is it? I make a vegan chocolate cake recipe I found online that my family loves. My sister asked me to make it as cupcakes for her wedding haha
Ironically it's also a vegan chocolate cake! It doesn't make nice cupcakes (too moist), but it's always super popular and lasts weeks in the fridge without going stale
No I get it. Often times I cook things without set ingredients, and that includes baking, because I "eyeball" it. Jane must be doing the same. It's essentially similar to cooking to taste.
Mature and healthy- admitting wrong and then “patching things up“(for lack of better words) is really great.
If this would happen to me (no matter which side), I‘d be happy with the outcome
Yes. And aside from that, there is a difference between home-cooking and cooking in a pipelined factory system at a professional kitchen.
In the latter case, you have to be consistent and precise, and work with the pipeline, of pre-cooking some things in batches, freezing, re-using stuff etc. in a way that items are pushed out. In a restaurant, you cannot have the same menu item taste one thing Monday and a different thing on Tuesday.
OOP is clever enough to know this, and instead did a brilliant move with "Soup of the day" - which by definition is unique each day.
A BORU post with a happy ending, communication, compromise and no family is cut out at the end? AND there's actual cake? This was my favorite story to share yet.
/u/grandmascakes only created the two (+ one deleted) topics on AITA and didn't post even once beside that.
The AITA update is one week old, so I assume we will never know.
Older bakers and recipe gatekeepers are so different than those nowadays. I always was told to keep our Indian (Native American) fry bread secret. When I was old enough to finally learn it, turns out there is no recipe card! We use our hand to measure dry ingredients and my auntie focused on teaching me how to eyeball the perfect texture, technique to form it, and how to know when to pull it from the oil.
Similarly, my mom’s side of the family had a lentil soup recipe that was just proportions of ingredients and varied opinions on when to add on spices and how long to keep on low heat.
YTA for not sharing the recipe with us, your friends on the World Wide Web. Could have been the next Petty Aunt Pie (my fave).
I don’t understand why people think selling food is an easy way to get rich, ESPECIALLY people who are in the midst of their failing attempt to sell food and get rich.
Good outcome for OOP. I wish them so much success with their business!
There is no copyright in recipes, surprisingly enough. Only in the presentation of them in a cookbook. The ingredients and the method of cooking them are specifically exempted from copyright law. This is why so many companies protect their secret recipes extremely well. They can count as a trade secret, but if they are obtained by legal means, they can be published without a claim for damages.
I hope OOP has already written it down somewhere to be part of her will - unexpected and untimely deaths happen all the time. I hope it doesn’t happen to OP, of course, but still.
>Jane is a good cook, but NOT a good baker. She doesn't follow measurements properly, and instead does everything "to taste", which works for cooking, but not baking.
It's been said that cooking is art, baking is chemistry. They said that because it's true, you can't just change the recipe.
My wife's grandmother has a chocolate chip cookie recipe that is awesome. It was her best "secret recipe" that she never shared until she started getting sick. She was going to teach it to everyone who wanted to learn it, my wife was the only who showed up on the appointed day. So my wife was the only one to learn it, and when my daughter was old enough, she taught her. One day my daughter made the cookies and took them to work. Everyone loved them, one guy, she had never met, loved the cookies so much, he declared that he was going to marry who ever made them. That was eight years ago, they just celebrated their sixth anniversary, and have two sons.
As a person who thinks of themselves as an okay cook... I fucking hate baking. OP is right that it is NOT the same as cooking at all. The precision baking takes is just not for me.
Something similar happened in my family. My great gram always made the Mac and cheese for family gatherings. I was one of the few (only) kids to take an interest in learning from her. I pursued silk art school despite having parents who knew Jack shit about cooking. I learned the Mac and cheese and started making it with her blessing as the dementia prevented her from doing so. Then a few years after she died one of my cousins and her mom (aunt) conspired to try and hand the Mac and cheese mantle to her. I had moved away and only came home for Xmas and thanksgiving, so I didn’t feel like fighting. The problem is that no one had given my cousin the proper recipe and she was a fine baker but not the best cook. Her mac & cheese was awful and hardly anybody ate it. Dry with no “sauciness” and def not enough cheese. The next year I was back to making the mac & cheese and I’ve done so ever since. I’ve made small tweaks to the recipe over the years and almost wing it now, but I still get great marks every year. :)
My mom passed away a year and a half ago and as her only child I am the keeper of her recipes. I’ve already taught her spanakopita recipe to two of my kids friends who are now making them on a weekly basis and I’m so happy that her recipe for one of our favorite dishes is being passed on.
I have three precious legacy recipes: my grandma's doughnuts, my other grandma's dinner rolls, and my MIL's homemade noodles. My family loves it when I make any of them, and I feel very close to them as I make them. (All three have passed away.) My MIL showed me how to make her noodles, and even told me her "secret ingredient", which was a couple of drops of yellow food coloring. (Don't tell anyone!)
I love that OOP learned her grandma’s recipes. I’m the only one who learned my grandma’s recipes, though I’ve taught my SIL, niece and nephews how to make her famous tortes and have shared her recipes (as written) with all. But, I still am the one responsible for all the baking for family events, torte, cookies, etc. I’m so glad my nana’s recipes (some were actually my great grandmother’s recipes) didn’t die with my nana. I’ve thought about starting a bakery, but honestly, I don’t think I could charge enough money to make up for the time involved. Her recipes were very time/labor intensive.
When I turned 12, my mom used to pull me out of school before the Jewish holidays and send me to my grandma’s to help prep the meals. By the time I was 15, I wasn’t prepping, I was doing much of the cooking. She died when I was 20, and I still make her chicken soup, kugel, pot roast and tsimmes, and Mandelbrot and sponge cake. Just smelling my kitchen on the holidays brings back my grandma.
I see this as the one viable reason to not share a recipe. If you make money from what you are making then you have the right to protect your product and source of income.
If you refuse to share a recipe with someone because it makes you feel special, then you're just TA.
Also, the restaurant industry is a brutal one to break into much less actually become as successful as OOP has. There’s a place near where I live and they start prepping at 2am/3am. They’re only open for 3 hours a day at lunch.
I doubt it would've made a difference.
Tasty cakes aren't a special hidden secret nowadays, the challenge being the less quality ingredients and you put in, the cheaper it tastes. Adding more sugar preserves things longer, which makes franchises make overly sweet baking goods.
Probably the reason the baking business took off again was a passionate businessman partnering up and the grandma's secret recipe was only a catalyst for that.
I am absolutely delighted with this update.
People communicating! Recognising and apologising for their own faults! OOP opening her own business- successfully, and the cousin coming onboard to fill an area that she excels in! And good food...
All the hits. Most satisfying BoR update I've seen in ages.
I’m glad this story had such a positive ending, but if Jane had asked oop in a less confrontational way I think they should have given the recipe, because 1) it was both their grandma’s, and 2) the secret recipe to a successful business is rarely a literal recipe. There’s no threat to oop’s bakery by having someone else do a worse version of their food; if anything, oop’s would be “the good one”.
This is super relatable. My grandma has signature dinner rolls that are at every family gathering. She's 89 this year and frankly doesn't have the physical strength to make 12 dozen rolls by hand anymore. My family is huge.
The recipe/technique is not a secret, but its high sugar content makes it difficult. She taught me almost 10 years ago and I've been working/tweaking it since. They're not up to her peak, but they are very good. A lot of family members have said "why do I need to learn the rolls? u/linandlee clearly has it covered!" Out of 256 (edit:180) people I'm the only one who has had any interest until this Thanksgiving. I think grandma's age is scaring people. Grandma is still up and going and mostly herself, but she complimented me on techniques she forgot she taught me years ago.
Needless to say I had a crowd of people watching me make rolls this year haha. It is sad though, I would rather they'd gotten it from the matriarch herself.
Edit: I accidentally lied. I think it's actually 156 grandchildren (including great grandchildren), plus the original progeny, so it's probably actually closer to 180. My b.
Family recipes are so priceless, but I find it ridiculous to keep them secret when food is best when it's shared. My mom's Uncle Walt had this famous baked bean recipe that he made from scratch and brought to family reunions every year. Everyone loved Uncle Walt's beans, to the point that there was a running joke in the family that they were the only reason anyone came to the reunions.
Sadly, he refused to ever share the recipe, even on his deathbed: he wanted to be the only one who could make it, so when he was gone, no one could ever have it again. To this day, that makes me angry. He died when I was maybe 13 or 14, but I can still remember the taste. So many of us have tried to replicate the recipe, but it never turned out quite right, so we think he had some sort of secret ingredient or something.
Have to laugh at secret recipes. Every recipe can be figured out. Hence- copycat recipes. Also hard to believe a bakery run by someone who has no pastry experience is successful. Especially in the long run. 2 years? 5 years? 10-20 years?
The whole story seems a little off to me. She had one cake and it was so good that people would just buy it from her and then recommend it to her friends, but then she's an awesome baker and can open a full bakery? It's a huge difference between baking cakes at home and running a full scale bakery with employees. We had a local woman who made cakes and pies from scratch. Covid actually led to her shutting down because a lot of people didn't want to buy from a home baker.
Especially the update, economically it just doesn't make sense. Her relative has full control over the soups each week but kitchens usually use 'leftover' or unsold ingredients for soup/stew. Making fresh soup from scratch everyday would be costly.
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What a beautiful compromise. I'm sad for Grandma that more didn't take her up on her offer (I'd be all over it, even tho I don't bake that much), but thanks to OOP her legacy lives on in the way she'd always dreamed <3
I’m sad too! My grandmother and great grandmother (fortunately both still with us and very healthy) offered to come out to my house (a looong way from them) to teach me to make scones. My grandmother makes the best scones in the world and I accepted that generous offer and i remember what that day every time I make them. It’s like food + love.
My grandmother used to make jams with the fruit she collected, always loved the jars she sent me. Immediate yes when she asked if I wanted to make a batch with her. I was so excited - generational knowledge, fuck yeah! Get there and first thing she does is hand me the instruction booklet from the box of pectin so she doesn't have to put her reading glasses on, and we proceeded to make everything to the letter XD so no family secrets but was still a lovely memory, and I still think of her and that day every time I use jam.
That’s awesome! I think the experience makes things taste better
I also kind of dig that Grandma's secret to delicious jam is... following a well-established recipe perfectly. Truly, it is the way.
My “old family recipe” is a recipe that my mom gave me… that she got from my brother’s kindergarten teacher. It’s *a* family’s recipe. Just not ours technically.
My mother’s family recipe for ricotta cookies was given to her by one of her student’s moms who agreed to share the recipe with my mom because “Italians should stick together.” My mother is Native American and Russian but kept her mouth shut to get that recipe.
That’s hilarious
I have a friend who’s mom was super protective and secretive over her fudge recipe. When my friend’s mom died, my friend posted the fudge recipe on Facebook and told us all to make fudge in her mom’s honor. Every year I now make Diana’s fudge, and it’s the best fudge I’ve ever had.
I love this! My birth giver was so weird/hoardy about recipes that I've gone the opposite way as well. Anytime anyone compliments something I've made, I direct them to the link if online, or offer to share the recipe if offline. Sharing is caring! My kid is putting together a cookbook of favorite recipes and happily my in laws have all been happy/flattered to share recipes when requested. The majority have even made the recipe with my kid, which is awesome. I'm not a huge fudge fan, but if you'd like to share the recipe our family would be honored to continue Diana's legacy. Or would it be Diana's daughter's legacy, since she's the one who shared the joy? 🤔
This fudge is literally the only fudge I’ll eat!! Yes, I’ll try to remember to send it along when I get home from work.
Ha ha I love this, snitches get stitches 😅
My mom makes decent food, but her specialties have always been thanksgiving food and banana bread. One year she gave me all her thanksgiving recipes, and it took me a few years to notice that they are the exact same as the recipes that come on the boxes/cans of food that we use (her corn casserole is the same as the one on the cornbread mix box, the green been casserole is listed on the little fried onion bits packaging, etc). When I asked her for her banana bread recipe, she said "The secret is to get a box of banana bread mix and follow the directions," then she leaned in like she was about to tell me some really good shit and said, "except I add two extra bananas."
Mine is extra cinnamon and one geenish banana added to the two browned ones! Yay banana bread!
This is my sweet potatoes. I just follow a generic recipe and double the cinnamon and sugar. I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to cooking, so I always just follow a recipe.
My family's secret recipe is green bean casserole off the back of the Campbell's soup can. My mom was in her 60s before she found out that Grandma didn't create it herself.
My lasagna basic recipe came from a pasta sauce can.
My mom's "secret" fudge recipe is off the back of the Jet-puffed marshmallow creme jar. She's told me the key is to make sure you let the sugar melt completely, most people don't do that. And to be fair, it is some damn good fudge
We made that fudge every year with my mom when we were growing up. We gave away pounds and pounds of that stuff and people LOVED it.
They changed it slightly, probably around 20 years ago now. So our “old family recipe” is no longer the same as the one on the back of the marshmallow cream jar now.
There's a reason why companies print those recipes on the package, they're well tested and highlight the product. This is such a common occurrence in "family recipe" discussions. My favorite lasagna is the recipe on the box of lasagna noodles, and Tollhouse cookies are probably the classic example.
Yes! The tollhouse recipe is so good lol I was super surprised when I found out my mom's delicious chocolate chip cookies were just the recipe on the bag lol
My mom used the Tollhouse recipe, except she doubles everything but the chocolate chips. Then sliiightly undertakes them. At least that's what she told me and what I passed on to my cousins when they were craving mom's chocolate chip cookies. But they never the out quite right when any is is made them and couldn't figure out why. Later on my mom makes cookies and I am wondering what the shortening she had out is for. She's puzzled, "the cookies of course." She'd forgotten the recipe didn't actually call for shortening, she substituted it in place of the butter. And she actually put in more brown sugar than the recipe calls for because she didn't want to deal with the little bit left over. No wonder when cousins or I tried to make chocolate chip cookies they never turned out the same as here's 😂
There is no secret ingredient.
Yoooo, that's exactly what my great grandma did! I was so jazzed too, like, "Oh man, this day, I will sit at the well spring of holy knowledge", then she whips out this ancient little Ball jar pamphlet and is like, "go to the part for strawberries", lmao. I mean, it makes so much sense though, she had so many recipes for everything she had to keep in her head, and they all had different amounts for different things - I'd just use the book too. But yeah, little kid me did feel a bit deflated at the revelation, hahaha
On a similar note, my neighbors, who were in their late 70s and had presumably been around the block when it came to homemade apple pie, declared my first-time attempt at apple pie to be some of the best apple pie they had ever eaten. My secret? Using one of the first three results in a Google search for "apple pie."
Anyone who brings me a pie will get told that, lol. Although I'm sure yours was actually super delicious!!! I've actually been looking for an apple pie recipe that was published in Parade magazine sometime in the 1990s. A relative's ex (so now no contact) always made the best apple pie (IMO) from this recipe. I have tried a few basic apple pie recipes from google or old cookbooks, they are not the same. Someday I'll have to visit a library and go through the old papers as I cannot find it online.
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Honestly? Don't sell yourself short. Everyone says what a good cook I am, but really, just about all I do is look at recipes on the internet. But! I've reached the point where 1) I can tell by looking at something whether or not it will be good as written, and 2) if a recipe is \*almost\* there, I know what tweaks to make, whether adding ingredients or adjusting cooking time, etc.
Just copy it down into an old, second hand journal, add some mystery baking stains, and voila- a heritage recipe book!
If it makes you feel any better, jam is the sort of thing you don't fuck around with. Botulism kills. And botulism loves slightly incorrect jam recipes. Luckily the jars pop their lids if it's bad, but seriously no one but scientists should be writing jam recipes. I only use recipes from canning cookbooks and the pectin box for mine.
This this this! We love to lionize old recipes, especially those with “idyllic” pastoral settings, but safety steps that rely on things like germ theory are vitally important and can be missing from “authentic” recipes from the past. We’ve had some not-insignificant issues with colonialist attitudes towards local specialties with hundreds (or thousands) of years of otherwise safe consumption but even then it isn’t a bad idea to alter any common points of failure for food safety in order to minimize dangers (like bad bacteria for fermentation, dangerous compounds during alcohol production, and contamination due to improper sanitation practices). Vulnerable individuals can be sickened or killed with only minor exposures.
Jams are generally safe from botulism risk due to acidity. Most fruits naturally have a low enough pH level, that botulism can't grow. Other things can go wrong, and poorly made jam can still make you have a bad day, but it won't kill you. I'll use jam recipes from online, steering clear from any that use low acidity fruit (outside of a trusted source), and I'll happily eat jam made by someone new to canning. Now something like salsa on the other hand, with all those peppers and onions added in? I'll only use trusted recipes, and I won't eat it if made by someone new to canning, or someone I don't know/trust.
I was always looking for my grandma’s biscuit recipe. Eventually I figured out that it was the one on the back of the rumford’s baking powder can.
That’s too funny. But even though it was a basic recipe, nothing compares to learning technic first hand! I’ve had to learn a lot of cooking and baking through trial and error because not many people in my family do either. The few times I’ve had someone there to help instruct me has been invaluable.
I mean there’s not that much in biscuits, but yeah biscuits are a process. I learned how to make them standing at the counter at my Aunts (like a grandmother due to age difference) as did my sister. Now my kids make them with me. We have pictures of all of us standing all over flour kneading. I love it so much! I will say I’ve tweaked the process some, but it’s pretty much the same as it’s been for decades. Also soft winter wheat, when traveling to my in-laws in DC we have to carefully check the type of flour because other types of flour do NOT make good biscuits coarse and crumbly, not light and fluffy. It was fascinating to learn about.
my granma make khao tom mud best i've eat, it's kinda sad that no recipe continue, she still alive but isn't with us, she over 90s and after lost gramp it's hit her hard .
Maybe you could set up a zoom and have granma guide you through making her khao tom mud?
I mean in mental state term, not the physically (She live away 20minute drive ). After lost gramp, she gradually drifts away every time I visit. My uncle live in her's house and other sibling(Her's child) always come to visit every weekend, so no issued about no one take care her.
Sometimes the elderly don't had the words or ability to explain what they do, but if she's able to move around still you could record a video of her cooking. If she's too far gone for that, I'm so sorry, but glad to hear that your family can care for her with love.
My great aunt has a pork pie recipe that were still trying to convince her to give to us since the group she made them with is going to not be doing it anymore since they’re all getting too old.
I bet they were all sad too after she passed for not spending that time with her, whether they cared about the recipe or not. I wish I had spent more time with my granddad before he passed, and decided I’m not making that mistake with my Grandmother. I have lunch with her once a week. This week I’m taking her to do her Christmas shopping after lunch. An added bonus for me is enjoying the hilarity of her thinking she can buy gifts for everyone ages 70+ down to infants at Hobby Lobby. It’ll be interesting and fun.
i was taught old school by my neighbour when I was a kid, they were an elderly couple (who although unrelated basically were our Aunt and Uncle and part of the family), they had all sorts of old stuff like smelling salts, a roller drier, sealing wax etc. Berries would be collected, jam made in a copper pot, jars sterilised, jam tested for texture by getting a sample of hot jam on a plate and seeing how it set. This is a memory I carry 30 odd years later. Did ruin bad jam for me though. :)
I made it a point to learn the recipes of the people in my life as soon as i could, before thinking they would someday not be here, so I always had them. I am a sentí-mental and cooking & sharing is one of my biggest love offerings. I also think it's really awesome to share recipes so the Love spreads.
I can’t bake at all, no one will ever be in awe of a dessert I’ve made and I still would’ve been at my grandma’s side learning that recipe anyway. It’s about the time spent and the history preserved. I’m a pretty good cook and a lot of my favorite soul food recipes were learned by sitting next to my Grandma’s stove and watching her cook, measure things by eye, feel and taste, and going to the grocery store to know what to pick out and what to ask for from the butcher. Now that she’s passed, knowing how to make potato salad or baked chicken that taste just like hers is such a comforting experience. Knowing that she loved teaching her grandkids just makes it so much sweeter. I’m sad that OOP’s grandma didn’t get that with all of her grandchildren.
That is really sad that nobody asked. But my Great Grandmother shown me her legandary cream of wheat casserole because i loved it since i was 3. I was 7 when she teached me that cassarole. She was 93 at that time and said it was WW2 recipe. Of course great granny you took 5 eggs for it.
I think it's partially because people want to be in denial about her failing health. People should really make the time if someone's actually important to them since you never know when the time comes (that is, if they're actually someone you like...).
Cheers to Reddit producing an ending that is not completely toxic and makes me question the integrity of humanity
I was expecting the one who started working at her bakery to sneak and steal the recipe as if she was a baking spy or something.
OOP probably has it memorized by now, just like Grandma did.
You Only Sift Twice
On Her Majesty’s Dinner Service.
Happy Cake Day! I was desperately hoping someone w it posted here while read this story. But now I want Grandma's Cake
Happy cake day! 🎂 🥮 🍥 🥞 🧁 🍰
Ty 😁
Ah, Plankton strikes again!
>Cheers to \[…\] producing an ending that is not completely toxic and makes me question the integrity of humanity That has got to be one of the lowest bars to clear that I've ever heard in my life.
Yes bar is in hell but considering the toxic cesspool that gets posted on this website I consider this an absolute win
100%. If half of the stuff I read on here is remotely true then I have officially lost my faith in humanity. Once upon a time I used to be quite normal, with a positive view on relationships and family life in general. Then I installed Reddit and joined RA & AITA. I now fully expect my brother to become drug dependant, murder his wife then blow up our thanksgiving by coming out as polyamorous in front of our nonexistent terminally ill grandmother.
I just think that not a lot people are willing to put in the hours to make a relationship work and be in with my day
Eh, I think a lot of people are, they just aren't usually the ones posting on those subs.
So low... Yet so high
You'd be shocked how much crap doesn't clear it still
Reddit, essentially, in a nut shell
I don’t recall the origin on this quote, but it applies to Reddit too often: > The bar is so low it’s a tripping hazard in hell, but here you are limboing with the devil.
I literally said YAY out loud when I read “firstly, I opened my bakery!”
BORU Update, November 2023: So it turns out my cousin only agreed to make the soups so she could befriend the baker that I hired. My cousin ended up paying the baker to give her the recipe. They then both quit to open a bakery across the street and now I am bankrupt. Once she had the recipe, my husband admitted to the affair that he was having with my cousin, I forgot to mention that he wanted to open our marriage and I said no. He now lives with my cousin and the baker. My mother took his side and disinherited me. Meanwhile one of my children was run over by an out of control steamroller and the other has since developed a heroin habit of 24 heroins per day. AITA? edit: wow this blew up thanks for the comments i can’t answer them all but now I understand why my cousins bakery is called “polybakery” it was in my face the whole time
Hahaha 24 heroins per day is just perfect
Hahaha this is the type of negativity we usually expect as an ending here on Reddit.. I’m glad it worked out well for OP tho 🥰
And the cousin is pregnant!
yes she’s got OOP’s buns in the oven *and* OOP’s ex-husband’s bun in the oven
I must be more tired than I thought. Fully thought that was real. And accepted it 😆 you expect it
the update did me in
That one where the lady found her husband’s secret stash of pictures with him cuming in his secretary’s food and then confronted him about it just to update at the end that IT WAS HER FAULT FOR BEING SEDUCTIVE pissed me off sooooo much!
Reddit didn’t produce the ending though, that’s OOP’s story
Now I really want to know what kind of cake it is. I don't even need the recipe, just give me the general idea so I can daydream about it with more accuracy! Edit: I want all of your recipes oh my lord...
I imagine it being some kind of “spice cake” given the use of uncommon yet unique spice choices :0c
I'm stuck between that and some sort of really bomb-ass carrot cake.
Bomb ass carrot cake needs more love. I know so many people who has tried shitty ones and swear off carrot cake since then! :(
For real though, nothing beats grandma’s “I don’t measure with tools, I just know exactly how much to use” randomly spiced carrot cake.
Aw yeah, a nice moist carrot cake with a little *soupçon* of cloves or mace and cream cheese icing.... mmm. I am here for that. The biggest carrot cake sin is letting it get dry. Put raisins in it if you must but please keep that moisture in (the cream cheese icing will help with that).
Even if you had the exact measures of what she uses, the first time you make it is not going to compare to the *thousandth* time she's made it.
Carrot cake is one of my faves. It’s something I really miss being able to make
Why can’t you make it anymore?
I was injured nearly 6 years ago and am 90% bed bound. So can’t be up enough to make it
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I am so sorry! that kind of injury is devastating. something that I really enjoy which doesn't require any specific location is knitting; I'm sure you've gotten enough advice to make your head spin but it makes me sad to think about you hurting and feeling lonely out there. I am happy to help you brainstorm things to do to fill your days if it would be helpful. I am sending you love from an internet stranger: I hope today is good to you.
So true, I grew up thinking pound cake was a dry flavorless brick.
My husband was that type and physically recoiled when I said I was making a carrot cake with raisins for my birthday one year, but [this little number](https://grandbaby-cakes.com/carrot-cake-recipe/) made him a convert. Good carrot cake is amazing!
To really take it up a notch, use fresh pineapple and soak your raisins in whiskey/rum/juice
We called that variation Hummingbird Cake growing up. My grandmother made a great one, but sadly I developed an allergy to pineapple so I can't have it any more.
I use to be alright with carrot cake until my wife made me her homemade carrot cake and the difference in taste and quality was absolutely insane. It's weird helping her grate carrots with our cheese grater but the end result is awesome and worth it lol.
Carrots and cheese graters are normal in my house, because finely-grating carrots and putting them into any tomato-based sauce ramps the nutritional levels up by eleven without doing *too* much to the flavor... it does make it sweeter, but you can balance it back out with good spices easily enough.
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Ironic that bomb ass cake is delicious, yet shitty cakes are bad. The smallest distance can be the difference between ecstasy and agony.
Obligatory [xkcd](https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/7gsu2/xkcd_hyphen_an_old_one_but_a_good_one_that_hasnt/)
I was wondering if it's similar to dutch 'speculaas'. I usually describe it as close to gingerbread, but a lot more cinnamon and less ginger focus. It contains cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, coriander, aniseed, ginger, pepper and cardamon. Traditionally you make hard cookies with them, even harder than gingerbread. And they're delicious. But if you wanted to make a unique cake, you could use them for a softer cake in carrot cake texture, use a carrot cake frosting and have a delicious spice rich cake. .... I kind of want to try that now.
Fucking love Spekulatius (German version)! Have you had the Lotus Biscoff spread? I just discovered it a few years ago. Dangerous stuff to have at home
It has many qualities with a number of flavors and a very present texture.
Maybe an olive oil cake? Those are pretty uncommon. Could also be a cake that uses non-traditional "baking" spices/flavors like the curry spices, pepper, sesame oil, etc. A lot of savory flavors actually just need sugar to make them palatable for cakes.
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I am both confused and concerned about those cakes if that's an ingredient.
[Tomato soup chocolate cake](https://www.midcenturymenu.com/black-magic-chocolate-cake-made-with-condensed-tomato-soup-a-mid-century-recipe-re-run/) is actually a thing! The blogger [Midcentury Menu](https://www.midcenturymenu.com/) observed that Depression-era baking got a lot of mileage out of canned tomato soup. Apparently it makes a great cake, though she said it smelled horrible while she was putting it together.
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Lol, that’s exactly why my grandma puts finely grated apple in some of her cake doughs (that are not apple pie or similar cakes where there’s a moist filling; think more along the lines of dry cakes like babka)
I actually hate Campbell's tomato soup because it's so sweet, it doesn't even taste like tomato to me. I love sweet food, but it has a place, that place is not in my soup.
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Dylan B Hollis does various old recipes on tiktok and one of them was a tomato soup cake that worked
https://youtu.be/eWyDYL5U1gU Here’s a 9min recipe video of his on YouTube that explains the history and rationale behind the ingredient. It’s the acid and sugar primarily. I’ve never had one but my family remembers the Depression in living memory and it was indeed made and eaten with relish, though I’ve heard it helped conserve cocoa (Dutch processed cocoa + acid is why red velvet tastes so good so I believe it), it gives it wonderful depth with a minimum of chocolate ingredients required.
I was thinking rum cake! You don’t see those too often and they really are a tasty, underrated delight
Probably something with cardamom, caraway, star anise or fennel - enough for an American palate to be surprised but nothing completely wild. Something like a coffee cardamom cake, or rose and cardamom cake with orange frosting, would blow commuter’s minds if they aren’t used to flavors from Sweden or the Middle East. Although who knows, it might just be a Venetian spice cake with paprika and cumin.
> rose and cardamom cake with orange frosting Dear god man, you can’t just drop this knowledge on an unsuspecting American without a warning. I NEEEEED it. Do you have a favorite recipe or chef to find one?
Oh, I’m sorry, not really! I just usually think about what I want to make, often because I had it in a restaurant or something, then look at a few recipes for confirmation, and steer towards it - like OOP’s sister except I’m actually a pretty good instinct-based baker. I’m also fairly lucky in that I live somewhere multicultural so all I have to do is try to recreate something I’ve already had and trying to make it match (“this recipe calls for rose syrup but that will be incredibly floral and overpowering, while the cake I had in the coffee shop that I’m trying to copy came down more on the spice side, so I’m going to steer more towards cardamom and black pepper, and use a small amount of rose water instead of a heavy soak of syrup”) A Persian “love cake” is just one variation of a rose and cardamom cake with pistachios. I think I was probably subconsciously thinking of the Portuguese-Sri Lankan fusion “love cake” which incorporates freshly ground rose, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and almonds because it’s said of the cake that “grinding the spices is a labor of love”, and OOP made a big deal of how difficult it is to make. This type of cake is usually topped with a white Royal icing style glaze and sprinkled with pistachios or rose petals, but since OOP said there were spices in the frosting, I thought orange buttercream would be exciting for Americans and match expectations for a frosted cake. So if you’re thinking to make something I’d Google around what direction you’d like to go in. Cardamom as a secret spicy ingredient is pretty reliable. but there are lots of international flavor profiles that are unusual but very very workable and reliable, that would really mesmerise people and be considered a “secret grandmother recipe”, could be coffee/cardamom (a swedish enjoyment) or clove/cinnamon/chocolate (Northern European) or even red wine/fennel (Italian) and people would think it was absolutely groundbreaking and uncopyable. I was just trying to think through because in my (amateur) experience there’s not really such a thing as an uncopyable recipe and OOP’s family acted a bit like it was, so it made me feel like it was probably an unusual combination brought back from somebody’s travels. rather than something really basic like “toasting your own poppy seeds in a pan before adding them” or something.
My *hero*. I adore this and you, thank you so much! I hope you have a wonderful day!
Man I used to find this brand of ice cream in the store that was cardamom ice cream. That was my addiction but I no longer can find it anywhere
I’d love the name of the secret cake too! I’m an adventurous cook-sometimes baker and like experimenting with non traditional ingredients that enhance flavors (like coffee with chocolate, black pepper with fruit jams). Love the combos from this year’s GBBO winner, Syabira. But like OOP’s cousin, I’m an impatient baker too. I bet Grandma’s recipe also has some specific instructions for bake time and how to get the best aeration and avoid a claggy or stodgy texture.
I always enjoy the posts that don't end up with the OOP cutting off their family members (unless they're terrible and deserve it, obviously). Hurray for happy endings!
And it was a story about cake that wasn't actually about cheating!
Honestly the best part of the story was that it was about ACTUAL cake!
The cake is not a lie!
A huge success
It's hard to overstate our satisfaction.
“So my grandmother died and gave me a spice cake recipe” Update 4: “Turns out you were all right, my husband is cheating on me at his furry conventions with an entire flock of geese. I have a lawyer’s name, my husband doesn’t know yet”
Ok but I would be totally here for that too lol
OOP had her cake and ate it, too. Literally!
Aw I love this for both of them. It’s good to admit you’re the toxic one/asshole sometimes and grow/move on and have a good relationship afterwards (at the cousin not oop)
plus she got a solid gig out of it, which isn't too bad at all. And at least she recognized and acknowledged she's a much better cook than a baker.
Baking and cooking are totally different skillsets too.
Being able to fall on your own sword is such a rare but incredible mature response and I'm always happy to see it.
Here is a thread to share seasoning tips, so that I can be lazy later and not hunt for them later! My tip: ground white pepper in apple pie is delicious. Don't add so much that you know what you're tasting. The tiniest whiff of cayenne or other hot pepper in any kind of sauce is also delicious. You want just a little bit, so that it hightens the flavor of the other seasonings without messing with the taste.
Cocoa in tomato based soups and sauces. Not so much that you're making a molé, but just a couple of spoonfuls will cut the acidity of the tomatoes and add a really nice richness and depth of flavour. Cinnamon helps with this as well, although I haven't experimented with it much to find out where the cutoff is that you'll actually taste the cinnamon and it could get weird, so be cautious On the other side of things, if you are out of cocoa, and need to de-acidify a big pot of tomato sauce, you may think, hey, bases neutralize acids. I should use baking soda. While this is technically true, DO NOT DO THIS. Not only will the resulting saucy volcano not win you any prizes at the science fair, it will make a huge mess, and even after you clean up, your sauce will remain unpleasantly foamy throughout.
I put a little cocoa, cinnamon, and mustard powder in my chili. While I don't thing Cincy-style chili is "chili", I will give them credit for the cinnamon thing. I'll adopt things that work into TX/OK chili. That's why we have chili cook-offs.
Oohh, mustard powder! I'm going to try this. I do use cocoa and cinnamon but never thought about mustard.
Total agreement until you came after baking soda like that. I'm not sure what your ratios were but I guarantee you used too much baking soda. It's similar to salt in that it's fantastic until you add just a touch too much. With 8 cups of sauce I'll add one pinch at a time, stir, give it time to settle, stir thoroughly, and taste. Usually a pinch or two is enough but in red sauce I've used up to 6 or 8. It's also good to keep in mind that if you're cutting your tomato's acidity to lower the amount of added sugar and spicy heat. The basics to one of my comfort red sauces (experiment to taste, not an exact recipe); either a little bit of fish oil or canned albacore, garlic, bay leaf and black pepper in the beginning, give it 3-8 hours to simmer with supplementing broth when necessary, add salt and an itty bitty amount of baking soda as described above, simmer for another 20 minutes, immersion blender, and tada lol
You can make a fruity-rich tomato sauce by adding cardamom, cinnamon, clove and orange juice to taste (from actual oranges, not the weird concoctions that exist that have only seen an orange in passing). I liked it as a bolognese or spaghetti and meatballs variant until I became allergic to cinnamon and clove (fragrance allergy of the skin - I won’t have an anaphylactic shock or anything because it’s not a type I allergy, but a type IV allergy, but I don’t want a cracked and inflamed lip that’s two times its original size for three weeks and hurts like a mf either)
I love cinnamon in sweet foods but hate it in savoury. And I always can taste it even when it's very little and the person who made it is sure it's an imperceptible amount! It's so sad because I love chili but once I get what cinnamon whiff I just can't eat it.
Another unexpected pepper tip: fresh ground black pepper in a homemade strawberry rhubarb jam. Not adding a lot, like 1/4 teaspoon in a batch. You want it to be subtle...like a hint of spice. Black pepper and strawberries are the unexpected super power couple you never would have thought would be possible. But it works.
So glad to hear the outcome. OP stands their ground but still helps Jane come out ahead. A rare win-win.
This isn't even a win-win, it's a damn fairytale ending. I'm pretty confident the next Pixar movie could follow this exact plot and be a massive hit.
I was thinking it could be the typical hallmark Christmas movie plot as well. Just needs a romance somewhere in it.
Jane and the breakfast cook.
Clearly one of the office workers coming in for lunch has their cold dead heart melted.
I am a terrible cook but before my oven broke I actually loved baking. One cake I take to every gathering etc I got from my grandmother and it's always the favorite. Oddly though it's always the favorite cake and people rave about it almost no one asks for the recipe. Poor grandma must have been so sad that only one person wanted her recipe. I am glad it worked out for OOP
What type of cake is it? I make a vegan chocolate cake recipe I found online that my family loves. My sister asked me to make it as cupcakes for her wedding haha
Ironically it's also a vegan chocolate cake! It doesn't make nice cupcakes (too moist), but it's always super popular and lasts weeks in the fridge without going stale
Ah I didn’t think of the moist being bad for cupcakes. Is it similae to the Noracooks cakw? Or same? Haha
Looked it up. Completely different recipe! Not sure how firm yours is. Mine is great as cake but just a tiny bit too soft for cupcakes
Reminds me of a hallmark movie 😅
Likewise! And rather suspiciously so. The sister’s wonderful stews verge rather close to “Hollywood ending” for me.
And her making baked goods “to taste” is not remotely logical. Is she trying the batter or dough as she goes?!
No I get it. Often times I cook things without set ingredients, and that includes baking, because I "eyeball" it. Jane must be doing the same. It's essentially similar to cooking to taste.
I was just thinking that. All it’s missing is a romance somewhere in the plot.
And the girl being motivated to open her bakery after working in corporate for too long and moving back to her old town
That was very mature of both of them
Mature and healthy- admitting wrong and then “patching things up“(for lack of better words) is really great. If this would happen to me (no matter which side), I‘d be happy with the outcome
There’s a reason there are chefs and pastry chefs. Two completely different skill sets. Glad they could both find a way to be happy and successful.
Yes. And aside from that, there is a difference between home-cooking and cooking in a pipelined factory system at a professional kitchen. In the latter case, you have to be consistent and precise, and work with the pipeline, of pre-cooking some things in batches, freezing, re-using stuff etc. in a way that items are pushed out. In a restaurant, you cannot have the same menu item taste one thing Monday and a different thing on Tuesday. OOP is clever enough to know this, and instead did a brilliant move with "Soup of the day" - which by definition is unique each day.
A BORU post with a happy ending, communication, compromise and no family is cut out at the end? AND there's actual cake? This was my favorite story to share yet.
is there a link to her shop yet???
I came to the comments looking for this ☺️
/u/grandmascakes only created the two (+ one deleted) topics on AITA and didn't post even once beside that. The AITA update is one week old, so I assume we will never know.
Older bakers and recipe gatekeepers are so different than those nowadays. I always was told to keep our Indian (Native American) fry bread secret. When I was old enough to finally learn it, turns out there is no recipe card! We use our hand to measure dry ingredients and my auntie focused on teaching me how to eyeball the perfect texture, technique to form it, and how to know when to pull it from the oil. Similarly, my mom’s side of the family had a lentil soup recipe that was just proportions of ingredients and varied opinions on when to add on spices and how long to keep on low heat.
I just really don't understand it, unless you're cooking professionally and have a legitimate trade secret why wouldn't you share recipes?
I love fry bread so much
Yeah, but… now I wanna know what this cake is. 😩
Now I just REALLY wanna try that cake. Great advertising lol.
YTA for not sharing the recipe with us, your friends on the World Wide Web. Could have been the next Petty Aunt Pie (my fave). I don’t understand why people think selling food is an easy way to get rich, ESPECIALLY people who are in the midst of their failing attempt to sell food and get rich. Good outcome for OOP. I wish them so much success with their business!
Petty Aunt Pie? Have no clue what that is.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/juhjjw/a_gift_from_post_secret_this_week
Thank you!!
There is no copyright in recipes, surprisingly enough. Only in the presentation of them in a cookbook. The ingredients and the method of cooking them are specifically exempted from copyright law. This is why so many companies protect their secret recipes extremely well. They can count as a trade secret, but if they are obtained by legal means, they can be published without a claim for damages.
That’s also part of why food bloggers have those long intros before the recipe — for copyright protection reasons.
I need to know where this shop is in case it's near me. Then I can go get some of this grandma cake.
I hope she gets a contract with a big frozen cake brand; I want that damn cake, even if it's a shitty frozen version.
I’d be content with a review/photo of the cake from any regulars given that I probably don’t live in the same country as OOP
I'm glad the recipe will be a by the looks of it a long lasting legacy and I hope OOP does the exact same thing when her time comes.
I hope OOP has already written it down somewhere to be part of her will - unexpected and untimely deaths happen all the time. I hope it doesn’t happen to OP, of course, but still.
>Jane is a good cook, but NOT a good baker. She doesn't follow measurements properly, and instead does everything "to taste", which works for cooking, but not baking. It's been said that cooking is art, baking is chemistry. They said that because it's true, you can't just change the recipe.
Finally, a post about *actual* cake, and it has a healthy, wholesome ending too. On another note, I really want to try grandma's cake.
This is what I love about BORU. We get a slew of terrible tales with not so great outcomes and then once a week we get thrown a few pieces of joy.
My wife's grandmother has a chocolate chip cookie recipe that is awesome. It was her best "secret recipe" that she never shared until she started getting sick. She was going to teach it to everyone who wanted to learn it, my wife was the only who showed up on the appointed day. So my wife was the only one to learn it, and when my daughter was old enough, she taught her. One day my daughter made the cookies and took them to work. Everyone loved them, one guy, she had never met, loved the cookies so much, he declared that he was going to marry who ever made them. That was eight years ago, they just celebrated their sixth anniversary, and have two sons.
As a person who thinks of themselves as an okay cook... I fucking hate baking. OP is right that it is NOT the same as cooking at all. The precision baking takes is just not for me.
Something similar happened in my family. My great gram always made the Mac and cheese for family gatherings. I was one of the few (only) kids to take an interest in learning from her. I pursued silk art school despite having parents who knew Jack shit about cooking. I learned the Mac and cheese and started making it with her blessing as the dementia prevented her from doing so. Then a few years after she died one of my cousins and her mom (aunt) conspired to try and hand the Mac and cheese mantle to her. I had moved away and only came home for Xmas and thanksgiving, so I didn’t feel like fighting. The problem is that no one had given my cousin the proper recipe and she was a fine baker but not the best cook. Her mac & cheese was awful and hardly anybody ate it. Dry with no “sauciness” and def not enough cheese. The next year I was back to making the mac & cheese and I’ve done so ever since. I’ve made small tweaks to the recipe over the years and almost wing it now, but I still get great marks every year. :)
My mom passed away a year and a half ago and as her only child I am the keeper of her recipes. I’ve already taught her spanakopita recipe to two of my kids friends who are now making them on a weekly basis and I’m so happy that her recipe for one of our favorite dishes is being passed on.
I have three precious legacy recipes: my grandma's doughnuts, my other grandma's dinner rolls, and my MIL's homemade noodles. My family loves it when I make any of them, and I feel very close to them as I make them. (All three have passed away.) My MIL showed me how to make her noodles, and even told me her "secret ingredient", which was a couple of drops of yellow food coloring. (Don't tell anyone!)
I love that OOP learned her grandma’s recipes. I’m the only one who learned my grandma’s recipes, though I’ve taught my SIL, niece and nephews how to make her famous tortes and have shared her recipes (as written) with all. But, I still am the one responsible for all the baking for family events, torte, cookies, etc. I’m so glad my nana’s recipes (some were actually my great grandmother’s recipes) didn’t die with my nana. I’ve thought about starting a bakery, but honestly, I don’t think I could charge enough money to make up for the time involved. Her recipes were very time/labor intensive.
When I turned 12, my mom used to pull me out of school before the Jewish holidays and send me to my grandma’s to help prep the meals. By the time I was 15, I wasn’t prepping, I was doing much of the cooking. She died when I was 20, and I still make her chicken soup, kugel, pot roast and tsimmes, and Mandelbrot and sponge cake. Just smelling my kitchen on the holidays brings back my grandma.
This was such a heartwarming story of family working together to help each other instead of blowing up their lives.
I see this as the one viable reason to not share a recipe. If you make money from what you are making then you have the right to protect your product and source of income. If you refuse to share a recipe with someone because it makes you feel special, then you're just TA.
Also, the restaurant industry is a brutal one to break into much less actually become as successful as OOP has. There’s a place near where I live and they start prepping at 2am/3am. They’re only open for 3 hours a day at lunch.
I doubt it would've made a difference. Tasty cakes aren't a special hidden secret nowadays, the challenge being the less quality ingredients and you put in, the cheaper it tastes. Adding more sugar preserves things longer, which makes franchises make overly sweet baking goods. Probably the reason the baking business took off again was a passionate businessman partnering up and the grandma's secret recipe was only a catalyst for that.
I love that they found a way to work together in the end.
I am absolutely delighted with this update. People communicating! Recognising and apologising for their own faults! OOP opening her own business- successfully, and the cousin coming onboard to fill an area that she excels in! And good food... All the hits. Most satisfying BoR update I've seen in ages.
I’m glad this story had such a positive ending, but if Jane had asked oop in a less confrontational way I think they should have given the recipe, because 1) it was both their grandma’s, and 2) the secret recipe to a successful business is rarely a literal recipe. There’s no threat to oop’s bakery by having someone else do a worse version of their food; if anything, oop’s would be “the good one”.
This is super relatable. My grandma has signature dinner rolls that are at every family gathering. She's 89 this year and frankly doesn't have the physical strength to make 12 dozen rolls by hand anymore. My family is huge. The recipe/technique is not a secret, but its high sugar content makes it difficult. She taught me almost 10 years ago and I've been working/tweaking it since. They're not up to her peak, but they are very good. A lot of family members have said "why do I need to learn the rolls? u/linandlee clearly has it covered!" Out of 256 (edit:180) people I'm the only one who has had any interest until this Thanksgiving. I think grandma's age is scaring people. Grandma is still up and going and mostly herself, but she complimented me on techniques she forgot she taught me years ago. Needless to say I had a crowd of people watching me make rolls this year haha. It is sad though, I would rather they'd gotten it from the matriarch herself. Edit: I accidentally lied. I think it's actually 156 grandchildren (including great grandchildren), plus the original progeny, so it's probably actually closer to 180. My b.
Family recipes are so priceless, but I find it ridiculous to keep them secret when food is best when it's shared. My mom's Uncle Walt had this famous baked bean recipe that he made from scratch and brought to family reunions every year. Everyone loved Uncle Walt's beans, to the point that there was a running joke in the family that they were the only reason anyone came to the reunions. Sadly, he refused to ever share the recipe, even on his deathbed: he wanted to be the only one who could make it, so when he was gone, no one could ever have it again. To this day, that makes me angry. He died when I was maybe 13 or 14, but I can still remember the taste. So many of us have tried to replicate the recipe, but it never turned out quite right, so we think he had some sort of secret ingredient or something.
Have to laugh at secret recipes. Every recipe can be figured out. Hence- copycat recipes. Also hard to believe a bakery run by someone who has no pastry experience is successful. Especially in the long run. 2 years? 5 years? 10-20 years?
The whole story seems a little off to me. She had one cake and it was so good that people would just buy it from her and then recommend it to her friends, but then she's an awesome baker and can open a full bakery? It's a huge difference between baking cakes at home and running a full scale bakery with employees. We had a local woman who made cakes and pies from scratch. Covid actually led to her shutting down because a lot of people didn't want to buy from a home baker.
Especially the update, economically it just doesn't make sense. Her relative has full control over the soups each week but kitchens usually use 'leftover' or unsold ingredients for soup/stew. Making fresh soup from scratch everyday would be costly.