Barbra Streisand's Relatable Semi-Homemade 5-Ingredient Meal Makes Us Love Her Even More

From 1968’s Funny Girl to 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces to 2004’s Meet the Fockers, Barba Streisand’s film career has a larger range than her impressive vocal chops. Her bestselling 2023 memoir My Name is Barbra covers a fair amount of ground as well.

In the 992(!) pages penned by the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) winner, Streisand allows fans to peek behind the curtain to see how she went from a kid in Brooklyn to a Hollywood star, political advocate, and BFF to the likes of Barbara Walters, Tony Bennett, Coldplay’s Chris Martin and more.

The memoir reminds us that Streisand, who has been married to fellow actor James Brolin since 1998, is no stranger to the big screen, the recording booth, the red carpet, and the kitchen. In fact, several sections of the book reveal that the bread crumbs she drops on Instagram about her adoration of ice cream and cozy TV dinners are not just for show.

Throughout My Name is Barbra, Streisand weaves in mouthwatering moments from decades ago as well as more recent times, at opening night soirees, during dates, on film sets and at home.

When a friend offered to make her a sandwich and said, “I bet you’re hungry,” Streisand recalled,  “Hungry? In those days, I was always hungry. Matter of fact, I still am.”

Barbra Striesand's 3-Course Semi-Homemade Meal

One of our favorite vignettes in the book recounts one of Streisand’s early home cooking adventures. At age 19, during an era when she was rehearsing for her first Broadway show, Streisand said, "My idea of a homemade meal was to open a can of corn, dump it into a pot, add milk and heat, and that became corn soup.”

Honestly, she was pretty close to nailing Chef John’s Just Corn Soup, which has earned 4.3 stars from Allrecipes fans! All she’s missing is a pat of butter, salt, and a pinch of cayenne.

For the second recipe in this three-part menu, Streisand explained, “I’d also add corn to Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix and fry it in Crisco, to make corn fritters…”

That boxed pancake mix, now branded “Pearl Milling Company,” ranked first in our taste-test of the best store-bought pancake mixes. If you want to take Streisand’s recipe to the next level, simply add 8 slices of crumbled cooked bacon, 2 eggs, and a scoop of sour cream to Streisand’s recipe and you have our fan-favorite Fresh Corn Fritters.

To cap off the meal, Streisand channels her inner Ina (who sometimes heats up a Trader Joe’s tart to serve for Thanksgiving dessert) and takes a hand from the supermarket. To make it feel like a from-scratch creation, Streisand shared a cake hack that we can’t wait to try.

“For dessert, we’d have a slab of Sara Lee chocolate cake,” she explained, which you can still find at retailers like Walmart to this day; Pepperidge Farm has a similar offering. “Before serving the cake (which also came out of the freezer bin), I had a particular technique. I would put it under the broiler until the icing fizzled and you could see little bubbles in it. And it got darker and slightly crystallized, which made it taste even more chocolatey. I thought it was the closest thing to a homemade cake."

Corn soup, a side of fresh fritters and a slice of warm, caramelized chocolate cake is a pretty impressive spread made from just 5 ingredients. The Way We Were sounds downright delicious, Barbra, and we adore and admire your ingenuity!