How I Started Tweaking Recipes

I have been adjusting recipes for years. I think I started doing it primarily to increase the amount of whole grains in my diet. So, instead of using white flour in muffins I’d use whole wheat for instance. Since then it has evolved into changing all kinds of ingredients. But what I have realized over the last few years is that I simply have very little respect for recipes. I tend to use them as a guideline and then change them to fit my needs and for some reason it didn’t occur to me until fairly recently that many people won’t do this. I have fun teasing some of my friends, “Ooooo, you put chocolate chips in your muffins. Was that in the recipe?”

I think some of the disrespect I have toward recipes comes from my mom and grandmother (aka Memere). As kids we grew up with both of our grandmothers living with us which we totally loved. And my dad’s mom was always baking something in the kitchen much to the delight of the rest of the family, especially the kids! Often, someone in the family would ask Memere what she put in a particular goody. More often than not the answer went something like, “Oh, I just followed the recipe…..except I cut the sugar.. and added some blueberries.. and halved the flour with whole wheat flour…and made it into a loaf instead of muffins.” Soooo disrespectful. I remember baking with her as I got older and would ask her advice about something I was doing, maybe how to measure something and I’d ask, “How about this, is this enough?” and the reply would be something like, “Sure. That’ll be alright.” Very scientific.

My mother is generally not a baker though she is a much better baker than she thinks she is, and she is doing a lot of her own recipe tweaking now. But Mom is a cook. She’ll “have a vision” for something and whip it up. I have almost never seen her follow a recipe for a meal. One of her signature dishes when I was growing up was Anything that Floats Soup which was simply anything that was leftover in the fridge thrown into a soup. It was never the same, but it always tasted good.

So, for me, as time has gone on I have become less and less recipe respectful and more creative with what I make. And what I have found is that most recipes will tolerate a lot of adjustments and are still delicious. Who says you can’t add chocolate chips to your muffins? Who says you have to put cheese in your pesto? I say let disrespect reign! Those recipes won’t know what hit ‘em.