It’s 2am, and you’ve got a powerful craving for one of Starbuck’s Caramel Macchiato. Pity your local corporate coffee joint is closed, huh?

Before you get all emo and attack a quart of ice cream in revenge, surf over to Top Secret Recipes and check their directory. In this case, you’ll find a taste-alike recipe for Caramel Macchiato (and several other Starbuck’s favorites). In many cases, the receipes are free. Some cost 79 cents.

The guy behind Top Secret Recipes — Todd Wilbur – has been happily reverse engineering some of the restaurant industry’s biggest sellers for almost 15 years. He calls his knack for culinary duplication “kitchen cloning,” and has so far published eight Top Secret Recipe cookbooks.

Ironically, it was the famous Mrs. Fields Cookie Recipe hoax which got Wilbur started. After actually trying the recipe, Wilbur realized it tasted nothing like a real Mrs. Fields cookie. So he retired to the kitchen until he’d arrived at a clone. And a taste-alike empire was born.

Sucker for punishment? Make your own faux Big Mac. Clean out your arteries later with a version of Applebee’s popular Low-Fat Asian Chicken Salad. Or whip up a batch of Pasta Alfredo you’d swear comes from Olive Garden — at a fraction of the price.

But stay away from the legendary McDonald’s cow eyeballs. You’ll find that whopper (if you’ll forgive the pun) in Wilbur’s Urban Legends in Food Land section.

Happy cloning.

Link: Top Secret Recipes