For those of you that are in business, I'm just curious if you found your recipes in a cookbook/online then tweaked them or if you use all original recipes?

I'm just starting to find/make recipes and tweak them. I unfortunately do not have family recipes so I am "starting from scratch"

When I started my business I'd already been baking for myself, family, and friends using cookbook and magazine recipes that I'd tweaked to reflect my personal taste (healthier whole grain recipes). I had no family recipes.

So for business, I looked at my potential market and created more products using basic proportions. After I'd been in business for a few years my business strategy (to increase sales and profits) opened to include the all-natural unbleached flour/butter/sugar/real chocolate etc. (scratch-made, no chemicals) customer. At that point my mom and aunt gave me their "secret" recipes. Some of those became excellent sellers in my business (and are included in my second book, Home Baking for Profit).

Over the years I continued to develop/tweak recipes. It's a never-ending process. Everyone starts somewhere! Good luck in your business!!

I just started my business, but it took 7 years and many - many guinea pigs to get them where I wanted them. I started with recommends from friends, family and people here, then I changed, experimented and went from there. You really just need people (guinea pigs) willing to try them, because after a while you get sick of "tasting"!

I tweak recipes, but when I'm done, they are nothing like the originals. There are a few, like Cakeman Raven's and the Hershey's cake where I make only a few changes.

I have no desire to balance a recipe, so I like to start with correct ratios. From there, I make drastic changes. I own many cookbooks and like to start with celebrated recipes from top chefs. For example, I love Throwdown when it is a dessert. On the Boston Cream Pie episode, I listened to the comments of the tasters and the judges. Then I make a "Frankenstein" version of the best of each. The results are the best of each already incredible recipe combined into my own creation. Ingredients are changed or combined for each component, or as in the case of the pastry cream, my own was used.

The pecan filling in my Bailey's cake is a Southern Living recipe. But with my changes, the filling was so much better than the original 5 star recipe.

Changing ingredients is another way to make a recipe your own. Anyone who has seen my site will see the huge amount of products with alcohol. Except for the Mimosa Cake (which gave birth to the Strawberry Pink Champagne Cake), those recipes were non-alcoholic. I did my usual tweak and then added ingredients.

Taking a good, moist, chocolate cake that uses cocoa powder, then changing to a finer cocoa, using VBP and homemade vanilla extract, plus adding a splash of fine raspberry extract and brushing the cake with copious amounts of Chambord with a Chambord IMBC is my recipe.

As much as I study the methods of the great chefs, their wisdom comes back to me when I play with recipes. I usually make a recipe the first time fairly close to the original. This establishes balance. From there, it is mine.

Even the great Peanut Buttercream of WB gets an overhaul with Tupelo honey, and a little more natural peanut butter. I reinforce his custard base with more flour and a little more cornstarch.

Anyone who gets recipes through pm's from me knows that I always give credit to the source and add my tweaks.

For non-cake recipes where the balance is not so much of an issue, I really make them my own. Cookies, pies, tarts, cheesecakes... these give the opportunity to really make changes.

So when I find a great cake that is perfectly balanced, I can usually add what I need to adjust the flavor, moisture, and sweetness. I just make sure it's a recipe that I think is capable of the changes.

I am a student of baking science, but my method of practical use is to start with top chef recipes. I own Shirley Corriher's, RLB's, Peterson's, Alton Brown's... all great science oriented books. They are filled with Post-it notes, highlights, and notes in the margins. But my enjoyment comes from being able to read a recipe and know that it will be good even before I bake it because of this study. I can also tell what recipes will fit into my bakery style. With my cookbook addiction, I love learning from the greats. But my pride in my baking pushes me to make it even better. After years of doing this, it actually get easy and the results, even with tweaks, become predictable. I still have tough ones, like the vegan recipes and some with more complex ingredients like stout beer. I may make a recipe 7 or 8 times before I'm happy with it. But with practice, this failure rate (even the failures are really good) goes down considerably.

Geez Susan, now you made me really hungry. I wish your shop was close by. Do you mail order?

Mimi, I share all of my recipes in pm's. I was serious about being obsessive.

Thanks Briggette. If you watch the scratch baking threads, you will see that we tweak a lot, but there are some that can create their own recipes. They are the ones we all refer to for balancing.

LindaF144 is the queen of fixing recipes.

I'm a little of everything. When I was a teenager I sat in chemistry class and learned about the chemistry of baking. I had to try it out, and so I started messing with recipes. From changing the way the ingredient went together to changing the amounts of each ingredient. I now have a large repertoire of recipes. I still use a few from my Grandmother, and a few are from cookbooks that I have adjusted to my tastes, but I also have several recipes that are mine and are not printed anywhere.

I can take just about any recipe and make it something else. I do it with just about anything. In pottery class I couldn't accept the glazes and I had to start mixing them and testing them just to see what would happen. It's me, I just always want to know "what if......."


Tami

I have done both - created my own recipes and tweaked existing recipes. Both are a lot of fun, but I must say creating your own without starting from another recipe is more work. I've sat down and done the math on each of those recipes. I really love the experience of that, though, and having to think through the balance of ingredients. I have a couple of those that I've then taken and adapted to other recipes and new flavors. For example, once you get a white cake recipe that you really love, you can adapt that in a hundred ways, as Susan was saying too. Whichever way you do it, have fun making them your own!

Every recipe that I use has been tweaked or created by myself. By the time I'm through tweaking them, though, they're so far away from the original there's little resemblance.

I read other recipes and try them. Then I play around with it my way. I have four boys and my dh who are always ready to eat and critique. Lots of recipes I've tried, I have change.