I’m frequently questioned about how I come up with new recipes. As a pastry chef or recipe developer, I don’t have any official training; what I know comes from books, YouTube, friends, and/or trial and error. I also thought it could be interesting to share my process with you as I recently spent several months formulating and creating recipes for my booklet, Even Better Brownies.
Table of Contents
Here is a general outline of the steps I take while creating a recipe:
Step 1: Find an idea
Second step: VISUALIZATION
3. Conduct RESEARCH
Step 4: Testing and Drafting
RECIPE AUTHORITY is step five.
However, before I get into the method I use to create my recipes, I wanted to briefly discuss the fundamental idea behind many different cuisines, particularly baking: the culinary ratio.
COOKING RATIOS
It’s true what you’ve heard before: baking is a science. Our favorite cookie, cake, and other recipes rely heavily on culinary ratios. The ability to comprehend these goods’ fundamental components is what distinguishes skilled bakers from impostors.
A fixed ratio in cooking refers to the ratio of one or more ingredients to another. Let’s use bread as an illustration. Bread is traditionally made with a 5:3:5 ratio of flour to water. In other words, if you mix properly, 500 grams of flour and 300 grams of water, or 5 ounces of flour and 3 ounces of water, will result in a nice bread dough. Although you obviously require a little bit of yeast, the precise amount is incredibly unpredictable and therefore has no bearing on the ratio. Salt is necessary for flavor, yet taste is a personal preference. Additionally, you must combine the dough until it is elastic enough to hold the gas that the yeast produces. Since there are guidelines to follow and technical concerns, the ratio doesn’t take these into account. From there, the possibilities for the flavor or kind of bread you might create are endless. You can add herbs like thyme or rosemary to make a herb bread, or lemon and poppy seeds to make a savory fast bread.
A convenient dough and batter ratio chart drawn from the “Ratio” book
I know many of you are wondering why someone would ever be interested in culinary ratios. Well, you probably won’t ever truly need it for the majority of home bakers. However, it can be quite useful for anyone who is interested in creating and writing recipes or conducting large-scale baking. understanding how a culinary ratio functions is equivalent to understanding all of the recipes at once, not just one.
Okay, now that we’ve cleared things out, let’s get started on the recipe creation process!
INSPIRATION
Although it may seem obvious, you must begin with an idea. It might be anything from a meal title to an ingredient/ingredient combo to anything really bizarre that just comes to mind. For me, fresh food ideas frequently come from organic sources. For instance: I have a cuisine or dessert in a restaurant, bakery, or cookbook that I absolutely love in one particular way. As with the festively sprinkled Brown Butter Sugar Cookies below, sometimes it’s the flavor, other times it’s the texture, and still other times it’s just the dessert’s aesthetic appeal.
Buttery Brown Cookies
I do, however, make an effort to maintain an open mind when it comes to creating recipes that don’t come naturally to me. On the inorganic front, my food ideas are typically sparked by what people are searching for right now, whether it be through Instagram DMs, recipe comments, or popular search terms. (Similar to how pumpkin spice becomes popular every September…)
VISUALIZATION
I attempt to visualize the meal in my thoughts once I have an idea of what I want to cook. I believe it’s crucial to begin planning your dish’s appearance as soon as possible; after all, you’ve probably heard the saying “you eat with your eyes first.”
I begin drawing the dish after I have a vague notion of how I want it to look. (Sketches are always rough because I’m no Picasso, but you get the idea.)
Drawing a food helps you visualize not just how it should look but also which additional ingredients you may use to improve its flavor, texture, and appearance. Without the lime zest and tiny lime wedges on top, these Key Lime Pie Bars would have appeared pretty bland.
RESEARCH
I research the options available after I have a clear notion of the recipe I want to make and how I want it to look. Consider apple pie as an example of a recipe that has already received extensive coverage. I consider whether my suggestion will significantly advance the conversation by introducing a novel flavor or texture, more readily available ingredients, a simpler procedure, or just better outcomes. If so, I’ll continue. If not, I attempt to concentrate on how to differentiate my recipe from the competition.
The fact that I can make notes about ingredient ratios, cooking methods, timing, and temperatures during this research phase makes it even more crucial. Naturally, the purpose of this phase is informational only; no one’s work is being copied. You should definitely read David Lebovitz’s excellent post about recipe attribution from a few years back.
DRAWING AND EVALUATING
The magic (or fails) take place here. The recipe can have a big impact on this procedure. Sometimes I can utilize a recipe or method from the past again… As a result, whenever I can, I combine ingredients from other recipes to create something unique.
For instance, I use a half recipe of the vanilla bean brioche dough from my Cardamom Cinnamon Rolls to make these Chai Spiced Cinnamon Rolls, and I use a chai spice blend in the filling for many of the recipes in my cookbook, including the Vanilla Chai Cheesecake Bars seen below.
I build together a recipe that I think will work based on the culinary ratios for the dessert I’m cooking, the proportions I see in my research, and the flavors I like together. I’ll jot down the ingredients, the amounts, and a few important words (like “cream together”) before I start cooking.
Once I start cooking, things alter; for instance, if a batter seems unusually wet, I’ll adapt and be sure to mention it.It is ESSENTIAL that you always have a pen and paper nearby when working!
In order to make sure that the recipe is as delicious and simple to follow as humanly possible, I test each recipe an average of three times (some as many as six to eight), making any required adjustments. I share a recipe to someone else after I’ve developed and tried it myself to see what they think. I’ll seek my fellow recipe-developing buddies for assistance if I notice something is off or missing right away so that I can fix it. (Special thanks to Cloudy Kitchen’s Erin!)
Before returning to the testing step, I’ll make any necessary changes to the recipe or totally redraft it if it simply requires more effort. For this reason, it may occasionally take a while before you see me working on a recipe on Instagram Stories. It’s rare for me to give up on a dish completely, but occasionally they require more than a minor adjustment before I decide they’re good enough to photograph and post.
WRITING THE RECIPE
Then comes my least favorite part: writing the recipe down after reviewing my scribbled notes in my flour- and chocolate-covered notepad. The guidelines for writing recipes are rather simple and logical. However, if you don’t put them into effect, you risk leaving a cook in the dark, helpless, and with a batch of unpalatable food.
Here is a list of inquiries I like to think over or refer to when I write up my recipes:
- Are the directions succinct, understandable, thorough, and easy to read?
- Even though I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I never presume that everyone has the same level of culinary proficiency. As a result, I strive to be as specific as I can while giving instructions and write as if I were speaking to a friend. I strive to avoid being ambiguous since I know that new cooks desire and require clarification.
- Are the necessary steps being described in the right terms?
- such as “stir” or “fold”
- Do the yields and servings for the recipe appear? Are they precise?
- Are any peculiarities in the recipe described?
- “Batter will be thin” and the “mixture will look curdled.”
- Exist any recommendations or cautions?
- If a meal will continue to cook after it has been taken out of the oven or if it shouldn’t be overcooked
- Exist any other methods that may be applied to get the same outcomes?
- For instance, chocolate can be melted in a double boiler instead of a microwave.
- Can information about partial or advance cooking be added?
- Exist any instructions for freezing or storing food?
- And so forth.
This list is by no means comprehensive; rather, it is merely a sample of the things I prefer to consider while I type down a recipe’s complete directions.
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING WHEN WRITING RECIPES:
- Indicate the ingredients in a time order. One of a recipe’s most crucial components is the ingredient list, which should be given in the same order as the list of instructions. Be sure to be precise, provide the precise quantities required, and specify whether the ingredients are frozen, softened, or melted.
- Keep ingredients for a recipe’s main steps separate. It will be simpler to follow if you include a subheading for “donut” and one for “glaze” with the relevant ingredients sorted in their respective categories, for example, if the recipe is for donuts with a glaze. When at all possible, this should also adhere to the instruction list.
- List the steps in the proper order, and make your directions brief and direct. The order of the ingredients in the list should correspond to the instructions. They should also be as brief and uncomplicated as feasible. Try to explain how to complete the recipe’s instructions in the simplest way possible.
- Give details regarding doneness. Don’t use phrases like “cook until done” since how does one know when something is finished? Give a time for cooking and a sign that something is done, like “when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs.”
- Specify where to store things. Specify how to store leftovers, including the temperature and containers.
- Provide alternative approaches or replacements (when tested). Offer extra details for bonus points, such as vegetarian and gluten-free substitutions for ingredients, but only if you’ve tried them yourself and are confident they’ll work.
- Describe your diet in detail. It’s usually a good idea to incorporate nutritional analysis depending on the serving size of your dish utilizing the USDA database. This feature can be carried out by many nutrition software packages.
Brownies with’mores
Your confidence may suffer if a dish fails, or if multiple recipes fail in a succession. I can vouch for that; believe me. Attempt not to let it depress you. Keep in mind that mastering the art of cooking requires time and effort, just like learning any other skill. Your culinary inventions won’t be ready in a day, just like Rome wasn’t constructed in a day.
Your mistakes will become less frequent and your victories more frequent as you train and refine your intuition. Additionally, as you have gained expertise, you will be able to prepare new dishes more swiftly and effectively.
