Oreos and Twinkies right out of your own oven
Posted
Aug 15 2008, 01:24 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Here's a fad in cooking that can save you money: You can find lots of recipes to make cookies and other foods in your home that taste like store-bought or restaurant items.
We can understand the desire to duplicate your favorite restaurant meals at home, because eating out can be a big budget drain. And it seems to be catching on. Our partner blog Wise Bread recently featured Todd Wilbur, who has made a career for himself telling people how to do that.
But we're not so interested in cloning store-bought cookies. (Take a look at this recipe for homemade Oreos.) We know we risk offending the multitudes by saying that if we're going to bake cookies at home, we want them to taste a whole lot better than Oreos.
Cooking and baking at home are usually lots cheaper than buying ready-made food in the store. (If you want an interesting take on why that is, read this post at Casual Kitchen called "Stacked costs and second-order foods" -- and our thanks to Kris at Cheap Healthy Good for that link.)
Restaurant meals are also pricey because you're paying for labor, overhead and someone else's profit. That's where Todd Wilbur comes in, with dishes from places like Outback Steakhouse, Macaroni Grill, Planet Hollywood -- and McDonald's.
Todd also has a recipe for homemade Twinkies. Twinkies at home? We'll pass. (But if Twinkies are your favorite food, we couldn't resist sharing this recipe for turkey stuffing made with Twinkies we found during research for this post. The cream filling is not wasted. It's combined with honey and used as a glaze.)
