Debi!! I swear we are soul mates! I've been working on a recipe book too, just for my closest family members!! It's been a really fun project, and I have enjoyed the stories that go along with it.

You killed me with the ketchup comment! Hahahaha!!!

it depends ont he recipe and whose asking..

I do have 1 recipe that my grandmother gave me as she lay dying.. She gave it to me on her birthday (a gift from her to me) No one in my family has it and she put her other secrets on her computer. my aunt has repeatedly ask for the recipe but I cannot give it to her. I have express instructions..

her other recipes, we share amongst the family, though.

funny story.. when I was going to visit my grandmother, I was hoping she would tell me the recipe on that day. I was taking my husbands grandmother to visit with me and I was excitedly telling her about the recipe.. she was excited and said oh good, then u can give it to me and I can make it Saturday.. I was like ummm no.. and I had this look like are u serious? we had to laugh later becasue she was like oh u are definately serious about that recipe I said yes ma'am..

NO...... not really, i only give recipes to my class and only after i have
mailed them to my self. I would like write a cookbook someday.

I don't share my cake related recipes with anyone except my daughter. And that just happens to be today. She asked for my cream cheese icing recipe to make a red velvet cake for an early 4th of July at her in laws Saturday. I offered to give her my cake recipe so she won't be making it straight from the box, yuck. I have a freind who was pretty persistant about my recipes for a while but finally gave up. She orders cakes from me so why would I give her my recipes? I said "what, are you kidding? You're not gonna bake a cake!!" We both got a big laugh and she quit asking. I still make her cakes.

I do share no cake related recipes.

Funny thing, everybody (or almost everybody) shares recipes here on CC, but they won't give them to friends or neighbors!! What if the friend or the neighbor is a CC member??

I usually make a photocopy of my recipe to give it to someone, so that no mistake will be made. But that doesn't mean that their cake will be exactly like mine!

As Cjbeeth said, everyone has their own touch at things, so even if we give our recipes to other people, it doesn't mean that the results will be the same!! I have a friend who makes beautiful cakes, she took my Vanilla cake recipe, but when she made it, the taste wasn't the same at all!! She was looking at me as if I gave her a wrong recipe, but I didn't, I gave her the right one!

Indydebi and Melvira that is cool. I am working on a cookbook like that too, well kinda. I received a handwritten recipe from my great grandma about 2 years before she passed on. I am the only one with the recipe except for my great grandpa (and he still rivals me in making it)

Even though i did receive a very nice jewlery box that her mom brought with her from Europ the recipes is my most treasured thing from her b/c it was a gift from her and it is in her handwritting.

Since she passed I have been working with my grandma to get her to write down her favorite recipes and in the process of going through all of her cook books we have found some hand written recipes from my other great grandma that I have inherited. These are some of my most cherished things in the kitchen.

I have thought about sharing these with my aunts and other family but no one cooks as much as I do so I don't think they would do anything but sit there. Some day I hope to share them with someone else that will enjoy them as much as I do.

sorry to hijack the thread, to answer the original question, I haven't found the right thing to say but I like the one about the KFC recipe!

You could have said, in deadly serious tones, "Only if you swear not to tell another living soul, but if you grind up a couple of fairy's legs and add it to the cake batter, it'll do wonders." He will be so weirded out and will probably say "oooo-kaaay, here's your flowers and you'll be on your way then."

lol, I love this site, lol, ok, my mother loves to tell the story of my grandmothers Mocha Oatmeal cake, I mean this cake is like the best cake i have ever had. My grandmothers church did a cook book one year, and they asked her for the recipe, she omitted ingredients and unit her dying day would not tell anyone but my mother the recipe and I swear when my mother gives the recipe, she omits ingredients also, it never tastes quite like hers. lol,

For friends who ask, I will give out any recipe that can be found by reading a book or looking online. However, I do not reveal the changes I have made to the recipe. I have invested a lot of time and money to perfect the recipe to my taste. I encourage them to use their creativity and make the recipe their own; just like I did!