I found my mothers old recipe book, all hand written, and a good quarter of them are for sangria, cocktails, and punches.

What I thought was an old family recipe for honeycake turned out to be from a Folger's cookbook my mom picked up in college. The original used instant coffee crystals.

Though to be fair, she's family and she's old so it counts.

I had a friend who finally agreed to teach me her secret family recipe for lasagna. About halfway through the prep I was going "Betty Crocker Cookbook, 1989. Secret family recipe my ass."

The fact that it's Betty Crocker is the secret.

Her mother told her it was a secret recipe, so she legit thought she was breaking some great family trust. She didn't believe me until I went and retrieved my grandmother's copy of the cookbook. The only change was ground beef instead of italian sausage, because her mom didn't like it.

My family pie recipe is "get X brand of tapioca, look on the back of the box for the proportions of other stuff"

That being said, my grandmother's secret family recipe. Typed up off of the label of a 1920's era Karo syrup bottle. I went through and modernized it into standard recipe format.

Grandma’s Peanut Brittle

1 c. Karo or corn syrup
2 c. granulated sugar
2 c. water
2 c. raw (unroasted) peanuts
½ tbsp. butter
1½ tsp. salt.
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Combine Karo syrup, sugar, and water in a heavy saucepan. Heat over medium heat until mixture reaches soft ball stage (232 – 240 degrees on candy thermometer). Stir in raw peanuts, and continue to heat until mixture reaches hard crack stage (300 – 310 degrees on candy thermometer). Immediately remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients; mixture will foam slightly. Stir thoroughly and pour out on a large greased cookie sheet. Let cool to room temperature, approx. 4 hours, and break up into pieces.

Can anyone think of a good way to compile an SE Family Cookbook?

can i get the cum free edition?

If you have to ask, you're not eligible.

We've had a couple recipe threads over the years, haven't we?

Are they still accessible? Even if they are, threads aren't the best format for recipes.

We had one, an excel file that IIRC robotroadkill put together. My hard drive that contained the copy died, but it might be posted in a previous recipe thread.

My family recipes:
--Honeycake, from a 1970s-ish Folger's cookbook.
--Fruit pie, from the back of the tapioca box and sub raisins for sugar.
--Passover mandelbreit (which since that translates as "almond bread" and I make it without nuts in addition to Passover leaves it with some existential issues), haven't tracked down the original source for this one, but it calls for boxed matzo mix so sometime after that.
--BBQ sauce where the recipe's just "tomato paste, maple syrup, molasses, vinegar whatever else you want to add. Play around with it until it tastes right."

Back of the box recipes are usually pretty good especially for baking. Partly because so many people are used to premixed stuff ( think for, for example, brownie mix) that anything made from scratch tastes heavenly by comparison. The worst brownie recipe on a box of bakers chocolate is better than the best just add oil and an egg mix ( though as a hint if you go for a get add oil recipe try peanut or coconut oil to make brownie mix much better.)

So, since the holidays are comeing

Take a baking pan and melt a stick of butter in it
Add a layer of graham cracker crumbs, just eyeball it should soak up most but not all the butter,
add a layer of chocolate chips
add a layer of nuts of your choice
pour a can of sweetened condensed milk over the top
bake at 325 or 350 until the milk starts to caramelize
cool cut and serve. They are ridiculously rich.
( you could also include a layer of shredded coconut and/or peanut butter chips and or mini marshmallows, or heathbar crumble and so on.)

Another one I make is a chocolate torte pie that people go crazy over,

Crust
Mash a bag of oreos in a food processor add some sugar and a stick of melted butter
( I don't measure, it should have enough butter to make a mixture that holds together when you coat the sides of a pie pan and it will harden when it cools). The crust it self is awesome so a little too thick is better than too thin. Coat a six inch pie tin.

Filling,
Chop 8 oz of semi sweet chocolate and and 1 oz of unsweeted bakers chocolate in a food processor you want it very fine, doesn't have to be powder but no large chunks left.
Heat 1 cup of heavy whipping cream and a tablespoon or so of butter on the stove or in the microwave ( I don't measure the temperature, I usually hold to my face as you would when lifting a cup of coffee and, if the rising temperature was such that, had it been coffee, I would let it sit five minute before I tried to drink it, that is hot enough) Pour it over the chocolate and blend until smooth.
Wait a couple of minute and add a large egg yolk or two and blend again.
( if you want to, you could also add a bit of vanillia, or coffee, or grand marnier, but it doesn't need it). pour in to the crust.

Put in the refrigerator and serve cold. It is extremely rich so a little goes a long way. Particularly good served with whip cream and/or a raspberry sauce.

Double the amount of filling for a 9-inch pan ( probably best to do the filling in two batches in this case.

But what I like best to do at the holidays is skip the pan altogether, take an egg carton and make small ones right in the egg carton ( given the thickness the crust will have, the percentage of crust to filling will increase) I have made between two and three dozen with the standard filling batch though you will probably need more oreo do to the ratio change. Makes it easy to take them with you and they pop right out with some pressure on the bottom. One is enough for all but the most hedonistic.

I decided to make nachos the other day, but all I could find in the kitchen were Kettle vegetable chips, baked beans, frozen garlic and dehydrated vegetarian sausage mix.

It wasn't bad exactly, but it was certainly the oddest meal I ever cooked.