As Luke would say, Try It!

Among my many obsessions in life- like those of using coupons, blogging, dreaming of playing the cello and not saving the planet in any way, shape or form- there is also the obsession with trying new recipes. But what I really love is trying those copycat restaurant recipes online. I love them! I always want to know if it is really possible to make restaurant food at home and have it taste just the same. So my latest experimental recipe was the knockoff for the Outback Steakhouse Honey Wheat bread. Jacob and I went to Outback a few weeks ago and their bread is probably my favorite restaurant bread of all time. (Finding the perfect restaurant bread is yet another obsession of mine...) So I Googled it and in .0234 seconds I had the recipe. With this recipe there seems to be a little debate, though, as the most popular recipe includes coffee granules and cocoa- two ingredients that Outback employees swear is not in the bread.

There was another recipe that received rave reviews that omitted the coffee, so in the end I chose that one. So did it work? In a word: Yep! And for that verdict to be coming from the world's most inept bread maker is saying something. I did not add the tons of food coloring that you need to get the true authentic color of outback bread, and my bread was definitely not that smooth little torpedo at the restaurant either, but warm and fresh out of the oven with some butter, it actually tasted like something you wanted to eat (so much so, that I ate one entire loaf in the five minutes after it was done baking). So if you want the recipe, you can find it here.

Some of my other favorites are:
Chili's Honey Lime salad dressing
Denny's French Toast
Sweet Tomatoes' Joan's Broccoli Madness Salad
Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits
Panda Express Orange Chicken

Next up for me to test out in the kitchen:
Chevy's Crispy Chicken Flautas with their Sweet Jalapeno Jelly (scroll to page 24)

And stay tuned to the blog for more adventures in baking as Cindy's 5th birthday is Monday and I will be attempting some sort of Barbie and the Diamond Castle cake/creation thingy- complete with turrets, multilevel construction, and LOTS of colored sugar :)