Do you deviate from the recipe?

I experiment alot when it comes to cooking. If you are cooking something new, I suggest that you stick to the recipe. However, I am a pretty good cook and will often do something that the recipe does not call for. To me, cooking is a matter of taste. The recipe, for me, is a starting point. I most add that things don't always work out.

I rarely ever follow the recipe a hundred percent. I am always substituting and adding or changing amounts. I just like things the way I like them.

I love to experiment with new ingredients and a little extra this or that. That's how some of the greatest dishes come to be. As long as you're careful with the basic part of the recipe, experiment to your heart's content...Who knows, you might come up with the next sensation.

I try to follow the instructions exactly when it is my first time making something. If I don't like how the recipe turns out I will either scrap the recipe or make adjustments. Like a banana bread I make it is usually too sweet if I follow the recipe to a T... so I usually cut the white sugar down and substitute some brown sugar instead. But I try not to play with baked goods too much, I work with varying the recipes on other meals with what I have on hand many times.

most of the time, I do since some ingredients I could not find locally or too expensive. Sometimes it turns out better actually and for me, I believe cooking is more of an art so I don't really need to follow standard measurments.

Yes I usually substitute ingredients with another. For example when I make cookies asking for butter I will substitute about 1/2 of it for apple sauce. I recently started to eat coconut oil because of its health benefits and I used it in muffins today instead of olive oil and it tasted really good and the great thing about that is that the coconut flavour and the sweetness substituted a bit for the sugar in the recipe. Also my daughter has an egg allergy so per one egg in a recipe I add one heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt and you cannot taste the difference and it cuts out the cholesterol. ALso I will usually add raisons, prunes, or dried appricots into a recipe with chocolate chips so my kids will eat it.

BEing a relatively new cook, since we moved and my wife has further to travel to work, I tend to follow the recipes exactly to the letter, but lately I have been deviating slightly because it seemed that we were eating the same flavours a lot and it was getting boring. It doesn't turn out too badly either, sometimes. But other times, I fear I put in too much of a herb or something and it changes the taste for the worst. However, I am learning to be more adventurous without ruining the taste! _Derek

When I am baking I rarely ever deviate because baking is an exact science, I might add nuts, or chocolate chips or something but I won't change major ingredients. When I am cooking, I pretty much always deviate from recipes. I always think that the recipes will taste better if I add certain things or put more of something in them. I have found a that the few times that I followed a recipe exactly that it was often more bland than I like.

Always! WEll, of course there's times when I follow completely, but there are many situations when a certain ingredient is out of stock and you just need to be creative to replace it with something similar or go bold. Also when I bake, I like to try making it a little more healthy so I may add less sugar or butter or whatever.

For a long time now I never follow recipes. I get inspiration from recipes or from pictures of dishes but I make my own concoctions. My grandchildren are my biggest fans so I will not stop doing it that way

Hi. I always love to eat as well as cooking. And because of this I find it less difficult to mix and match, add and deduct the ingredients. As a matter of fact, I do not follow the recipe from word to word but create my own version especially if the ingredients are not available in my country or off season. I enjoy doing this. So far, all the results of my trial and error recipes has been good. Or I am just lucky.

At the start when i first began to cook i always went with the way the recipe was written down, i guess i just didn't want to change anything as i back then never really knew what i was doing and didn't want to make any mistakes. Now i am a lot older and wiser i have tasted many varieties of different food and also started to experiment more with the food i make. If we don't experiment then we don't know what we are capable of, it is great to try nnew things and to add something different, especially if the food tastes better for the alterations you have made. I now see recipes just as a guidline, but knowing that i am able and confident to change a few things.

Yes I do, especially when I dont like an ingredient I remove it from the list and think of other alternatives that will suit my taste. Or if I deem it necessary to add e.g. salt/pepper. I think it is okay, anyway recipes are also invented by different people and even one menu has a lot of recipes/ways to do it. So it's perfectly fine to make your own recipe :)

hi! i love to bake too. i usually go through a recipe before making it. i kind of imagine things as to how it might taste and look like. if i'd think it would be wonderful then i would try out and make a batch using the same measurements the recipe would ask for. afterwhich, i'd try it and i would make notes on the recipe itself... any comment for that recipe will be placed at the bottom, like "too sweet" or something else. that way i'd have a baseline as to what to make next time. sometimes there are recipes that sound yummy but when you make it, it lacks taste or just horribly ewwwy! baking is fun specially if you have ingredients and time to try out recipes but each time is always an experience to taste!

The only time I follow a recipe exactly is when I'm unfamiliar with it. After the first or second time of making it, I usually "do my own thing" and make variations of the original. I do add ingredients that weren't there sometimes and sometimes I leave things out or decrease/increase other ingredients.

I like to cook more than baking. I don't need to follow any recipe with cooking or even create lots of new things on my own for cooking. But when it comes to baking, I would follow the recipe, every once in a while, I like to add something int he bred though. I think there could be big difference in the baking if I don't follow exactly what the receipe says...

I almost always change recipes. When I bake something like cookies, I cut down on the amount of sugar. I cut down on seasonings and spices that I don't like, and sometimes add spices that the recipe doesn't call for. I've been cooking for so long that I generally have a pretty good idea what will work and what won't. I don't even follow my bread machine recipes exactly, because if you keep to the total amount of wet and dry ingredients it calls for, you can change a lot of different things. I vary the percentage of whole wheat and white flour, for instance. I also add a tablespoon of soy flour for extra nutrition. Sometimes I throw in an egg or two, even if the recipe doesn't call for it. I just make sure that the eggs are part of the liquid measurement.

I like cooking but I don't really follow any recipes religiously. If there's something new that I want to try out, I just read the recipe once to get a general feel on how to go about it and to see the ingredients that I need. But when it comes to actually cooking it, I find myself tweaking it by adding or removing ingredients to my taste. However, I think when it comes to baking, following the recipe with a particular emphasis to measurement and the order on how to do things is more important in order to get the desired results. This is probably the reason why I never got into baking too much. :)

Hi, I don't feel like a natural born cook or a gifted one when it comes to cooking, lol. That's the reason I've always stick to the recipe. I can't make some improvement on the recipe because I'm not that confident. I'm afraid I'll ruin the recipe. The far as I can go is find a substitute for the missing ingredient.

It all depends on what I'm going to do. When I'm going to bake cookies I follow the recipe exactly to get the best result. When I cook food after a recipe I can add some and withdraw some ingredients. Doing certain dishes I follow the recipe strictly. Because some spiceys are highlightning a taste of some of the ingredients. Some days I make my own complete improvised composition of meal. It has to do who is going to eat, if it is a special occassion or a event.