Sarah Sandori asked: Did you know that some of the hardest restaurant recipes to obtain are those for desserts? It’s true.
The big chain restaurants spend time and money creating special “signature” dessert treats. In many cases they invest more in coming up with a new twist on a gooey double-fudge ice cream cake than they do in figuring out more ways to dress up their hamburgers. It just makes economic sense.
Loyal patrons of a given restaurant may really like the hamburgers, or the pasta, but it’s those sinful desserts that often draw them back, meal after meal. Truly, a magnificent dessert can be the most addictive item on the menu.
That’s why, as I’ve discovered through my own research, getting a recipe for a restaurant’s top dessert item can be extremely difficult. But remember, it is just a recipe, after all–a list of ingredients plus instructions on how to put them together.
As I’ve written previously, the most direct way to obtain recipes for a restaurant’s menu offerings–even desserts–is to ask. Often, though, you’ll be politely rejected. Or, the manager might just vaguely tell you something like, “Well, it’s just some vanilla ice cream and a little hot fudge and some nuts and a cherry,” while leaving out important details: Whose vanilla ice cream? How is the fudge heated? Etc. Often there will be some secret ingredient that he will conveniently neglect to mention at all.
I’m grateful therefore to the many unsung heroes of the Internet who have done the detective work to discover the exact recipes used to create some of the most mouth-watering restaurant desserts in America–and who have shared them with the world.
If your favorite restaurant serves up an especially tempting dessert that you’re just dying to get the recipe for, chances are you can find it on the Web. You just need to put your best search skills to work and be persistent. Someone out there has it–and has either posted it for free on some chat board or has put it into an inexpensive e-book along with other so-called top-secret recipes.
This is the information age, after all. And really, what more crucial information is there to us foodies than the knowledge to duplicate our favorite sinful desserts right in our own kitchens?
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