# How much to pay for a recipe?



## veggie45 (Jan 28, 2013)

What's a reasonable price to pay someone for a vegan dessert recipe?  I'm thinking along the lines of a cake, cupcake, or brownie recipe. Thanks!


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## chefwriter (Oct 31, 2012)

Why pay anything? There are lots of recipes out there or you can develop your own. Slight changes in amounts and ingredients make most recipes different anyway.


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## patrick spriggs (Dec 12, 2012)

brownies

raw cacao maybe 1 cup

organic maple syrup, honey, agave, stevia- 3 tbs or to taste

organic almond meal 1 cup

water 2 spoons

mix together until brownie consistency forms. 

Adding things like cayanne pepper can keep things interesting, also seasoning with kosher salt or himalayan rock salt will make a bitter brownie seem more sweet. add nuts or grains, fruit, organic peanut butter, whatever you like really.

make sure it's raw cacAo not cocoa. the former is super good for you, the latter is refined and full of preservatives and additives.

you can add raw cacao butter to make them set harder as well.

if you want to make cupcakes, make the same recipe as above, but use an avocado icing and garnish them up with strawberries or nuts. to make the choc avocado icing, blend 1 avocado with some cacao, and maple syrup or similar.


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## veggie45 (Jan 28, 2013)

Thanks for the info! I haven't been to culinary school and am actually looking to create vegan, gluten free desserts. I know vegan baking is tough in and of itself, so when I add gluten free to the mix, I feel like I'd have to spend weeks or possibly months perfecting a good recipe.  I was thinking of just paying a chef instead, since I'm sure it would take him/her 1/10 of the time it would take me.  Does anyone know approximately how much chefs usually get paid for each recipe they create? Thanks!


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## carrionshine211 (Feb 11, 2013)

Any amount is too much, dont pay for recipes, just aquire them through your experiences. Start networking and they will come to you. Stay away from yahoo answers. Try to find someone with celliac disease, they usually know how to do gluten free everything.

Chefs dont get paid per recipe. If you want a vegan/gluten free baker, you just offer them a certain wage and they work for you. They might not even want you to see their recipes. I would just put an ad on Craigslist for a baker if you can afford one.


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

25 years ago paying a chef for unique recipes may have been justified. When i started out cooking Italian,, things like pizza dough recipes were handed to you on notebook paper or verbally taught. But everything is available on the net now....for free.
And there are very few original innovations anymore. Look at it this way...if your average 20.00 cookbook contains 100 recipes, that's 20 cents per recipe. If you're still feeling compelled to pay...you might start there.


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## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

Patrick Spriggs said:


> make sure it's raw cacAo not cocoa. the former is super good for you, the latter is refined and full of preservatives and additives.


I have never, ever, heard of such a thing in my life.

Look, a cocoa bean is 100% cocoa bean. It grows in pods, the pods are cut down, the fruit (white fleshy fruit with the bean imbedded in the middle) scooped out and it is fermented. Yes fermented, piled into a heap covered with banana leaves an left to ferment for several days. A bean not fermented will have "0" flavour, nada, diddly squat.

After this the bean is dried under the hot sun, then bagged and shipped all around the world.

So far no "additives" or "preservatives" have been used, O.K.?

At the factory the beans are cleaned with air blasts, then roasted.

So far no "additives" or preservatives" have been used, O.K.?

Next the beans are crushed, then milled finer and finer, at this stage they have the consistency of peanut butter.

So far no "additives" or "preservatives" have been added

This paste is put into hydraulic presses, and under tremendous pressure, cocoa butter is extracted. The bean naturally contains over 50% cocoa butter, most cocoa powders have a residual amount of cocoa butter of 10-12%.

Still nothing has been added at this stage.

After the butter extraction, the resulting cake is ground up, and Presto! you have cocoa powder

*Nothing has been added during this whole process*

There is no need to add "preservatives" or "additives" to cocoa powder. There is no water in cocoa powder, so it can't go bad. Sure it can go stale, eventually, but it can't go bad.

If you like, I can educate on the making of chocolate, of which, even the most inferior eastern european and american chocoaltes don't add "preservatives" in chocolate for the simple reason that there is no water. No water, it can't go bad. It can go stale, eventually, but it can't go bad. Milk chocolates will eventually go rancid, on account of the milk powder, but there is no "preservatives" in milk chocolate.

I hope this has been informative.


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## patrick spriggs (Dec 12, 2012)

sure was informative, thanks.

just trying to make the point of not using certain cocoas that do have things added to them, some contain refined sugars and such which are sold as cocoa for hot chocolate drinks. You want the one without anything but what foodpump has mentioned.


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## ed buchanan (May 29, 2006)

N o t h i n g   no one can patent a recipe most are modified of things that were done before. If yoy notice most fast food joints use the word secret when talkig ingredients or sauces not patented


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

Haha in my experience, including one where I was a long time customer, THEN started working there,

Ive found that "secret" often means "from a bottle or can" . This place was known for their good hollandaise.

Once I started there, and walked through the dry storage area, there it was--the mother lode!

Several cases of their signature...canned...hollandaise sauce. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/rolleyes.gif


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## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

Getting back to the original question, my answer is nothing.

If I have to rely on a recipie 100%, that means I don't have sufficient knowledge of the techniques and ingredients involved.  I f I do have the techniques and ingredient knowledge, I can create any recipie I desire, and I because I do, I have no wish to exactly re-create what the guy next door,or on you-tube, or in some restauarnat across the country  is doing.

Look, say for example I need a recipie for a good seasoning salt.  Let's say I buy it, and the recipie calls for Hungarian paprika.  I can follow this blindly and never know the diffrence between Hungarain and Spanish, the difference between numeg and mace or why and how to use white vs. black pepper.

Say for example I buy an apple pie recipie and it tells me to use Northern Spy apples.  What can I do if I can't get this variety? Sit in a corner and cry?  Substitute spartans or golden declicious --with diasterous results?  Sub braeburn or gala apples with good results?


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## smork (Aug 27, 2012)

though i have sold recipes in the past,only because i was approached with the quetion,how much would you charge me for a recipe?   i did it,i took it,and i spent it.   didnt feel bad at all.  thing is in my world,thats very much not the norm.   geting paid usually comes in the recipe developement dept.   you need to pick a recipe  or picture you like and then maybe pay someone per hour to produce it and standardize a recipe for you to use and pass on.


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## dobzre (Mar 3, 2011)

Paying for a recipe can skip the time involved in developing one on your own but i'll bet 99% of the time you'll feel pretty stupid once you find out what the recipe is. So its really not worth it, you might even learn something in the process.


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## enlguy (May 1, 2015)

What you're completely ignoring, though, is a) how book content is compensated, and b) that's if one copy sells, not hundreds or thousands.  If it was self-published, and you sell 1,000 copies, now that means $20/recipe.


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