Today’s family cooks sharing their most-requested recipes—that’s the hallmark of every Taste of Home product. Each year the Taste of Home Test Kitchen receives more than 2,000 recipes. Many of those are entries for contests and others are submitted for particular magazine features. Most, however, are simply shared by home cooks for the enjoyment of others.
What happens to those family favorites after they’re received at the Taste of Home Test Kitchen? Let’s consider the steps a dish goes through once it arrives in our mailbox. In this instance, we’ll look at the history of the recipe Grandma’s Apple Cake—an entry in the Homemade Harvest Contest.
Nearly 500 recipes were submitted for this contest, leaving a lot for the Taste of Home food editors and culinary assistants to review. They check to see which entries fit the contest criteria and whether submissions make sense for the Taste of Home family of recipes (easy to prepare, common ingredients, etc.). They also look to be sure Taste of Home hasn’t published a similar recipe in the past.
Grandma’s Apple Cake met all the editors’ criteria, made all the cuts, and was scheduled for taste testing by the contest judges. In this process, a panel of test cooks and editors sample contest entries over a period of six tasting sessions. They rate each dish before sharing their results and opinions with one another.
Grandma’s Apple Cake received 85 out of 100 points to win the Grand Prize! The winner was contacted, the cash prize was sent and the recipe was scheduled for photography at the Taste of Home photo studio.
The recipe was published in the September/October 2017 edition of Taste of Home magazine and was later posted to TasteofHome.com as well as several social media sites.
Once a Grand Prize winner is published in the flagship magazine, we’re eager to share it in our other products as well. For instance, Grandma’s Apple Cake was published in two newsstand specials over the course of the following year as well as three cookbooks, including this one! Be sure to turn to page 363 and bake up this award-winning treat!
Share your all-time favorite recipes at TasteofHome.com today.