What recipe are you extremely eager for but have never found the "exact" one?

My favorite desert is tiramisu. I use to get this one in a North Carolina Restaurant that no longer is in business. I have tried getting it from many other places but none of them have the quality or come close to the same taste. It had a perfect blend of coffee, and cocoa flavor and the mascarpone cheese was perfectly sweeten. Not too much or too little. When I would have it with coffee, it was a little bit of heaven. I have tried several recipes and none have come close. It also is a bit on the expensive side to get wrong, so I have given up.

TooJay’s Mounds cake. (FL based chain restaurant).

Gus’s fried chicken. (World famous chicken only found in the Memphis area).

My grandma’s matzoh ball soup.

Butterscoth tart. I used to have it at primary school. My mum got the recipe but it didnt taste anything like it. I have had in cafes but it is no comparison to the schools recipe. I would love another piece of it.

Jason’s Deli gingerbread muffins. I can’t get the same gooey texture or bite when I make them. Been searching for a recipe forever.

My mom’s chocolate cake with fudge frosting. I have the recipes but just can’t get them right. Pretty sad when you consider I have a pastry arts diploma! The cake comes out pretty close, but the frosting comes out wrong.

My mother’s fried chicken, swiss steak and chocolate fudge. I’ve tried for decades to recreate them… without success.

It was your mother who made the difference, the way she was, was part of the taste, the moment, and it would spoil it all to recreate it, at the same time that you should never stop trying, because, each time you do, the comparison brings back all the things you loved about those moments.

Oops, I was a Noahtall. Perhaps it was just the flavor of steak with that sauce, fudge with that texture?

As to the recipe I am extremely eager for—ahh, it was a moment in the sunshine, long ago, with lemondrops, when I was five. It was an irreducible moment. So simple, sublime. Just sitting on the sidewalk enjoying lemondrops. The ones I buy today are good, and the sunshine is fine, and sometimes I come near to the moment.

@JLeslie I remember eating corned beef sandwiches and having Killer Cake at TooJay’s in Palm Beach Gardens just off the PGA Blvd at Military Trail in the 1980’s. I’d love to have the recipe for the “Killer”.

@Tropical_Willie Well, don’t hold your breath. When I moved to TN I called corporate to ask for the recipe and they wouldn’t share. I told them I would send my new driver’s license and swear never to share it or sell it, but no dice. LOL. They don’t ship the cakes ether. I have carried home cake thriugh the airports more than once. I moved back to FL a few months ago near Tampa, and there is one TooJay’s in my neck of the woods. In Palm Beach Countty there are several.

In the 1980’s I think there was only one other one in the Palm Beach area beside the one off of PGA. Went back in late 1990’s, it had moved from the strip mall on PGA to a place on the road to the Gardens Mall.

My grandma made the best oatmeal cookies ever!
We have the recipe that she used, but for some reason nobody else can make them the same way. My sisters come the closest, but they’re not exactly right.

When I was younger I worked in an Italian restaurant. Every Friday one of the bartenders would bring in a cake to sell at the bar. They were all good but her spice cake to this day is still the greatest cake I’ve ever had. What I wouldn’t do for that recipe…

Souffled potatoes. These are deep fried potatoes that are hollow in the middle. I had them once at a restaurant as a child and always wanted to make them. Julia Child has a recipe for them that I’ve tried 3 times. It involves cutting the potato slices exactly (I used a ruler); two fryings at 2 different heats (I used two pans and thermometers). I got maybe two or three perfect ones and lots of plain old french fries. I’m not going to try again, but I wish I could even find them in a restaurant again.

Pralines like my mom used to make. Once I asked my aunt for the recipe. She said something like, “Oh, I have a BETTER one! It uses this and this.”
I said, “I’d really like the one my mom had.”
She said, “No. This is a better recipe.” It was almost like she got…mad at me! I mean, she refused to give me the other!
I tried it. It WASN’T a better recipe, IMO.

O! The chocolate ice cream sauce they had at the…Howard Johnsons, was it?