When creating a recipe book, you might not know where to start, but it’s surprisingly simple with bonusprint. Create a book full of family recipes, or your own speciality dishes. Whatever food you love, creating a recipe book has never been more straightforward. Here are some tips and tricks to help you create a cookbook that’ll sit in pride of place in your kitchen.
Start collecting
The first thing you need to do for your home-made cookbook is get your hands on all those awesome recipes. From the scrawled notes on baking paper, to grandma’s annotations, and recipes emailed from afar, collect them all from your family. It could be a great idea to get everyone together on a video call, or even meet up somewhere if you can, and spend some quality time together going through all your favourite meals. And remember to always keep recording any new recipes you come up with to add into the mix.
Choose your theme
Probably the biggest question you need to answer when you’re making your recipe book is what should it look like? Is it going to be a collection of the family’s favourite recipes, or is it going to be a showcase of all your own dishes? Maybe you want this book to focus just on the delicious desserts you create or simple vegetarian food you rustle up every day? Once you’ve got your theme sorted, you’re ready to get going on the creative bit.
Pick a design
Whatever you want your recipe book to be about, take a look at our great pre-designed themes for inspiration. These are full of brilliant ideas of where to put your photos, recipes, notes, and cooking instructions. All of these themes are fully customisable, so you can make your book exactly how you want it and really get creative. If you’ve got a precise idea in mind of how you want your cookbook to look, there’s always the option to start from scratch.
Get structured
For the best results, you should think about how you want your recipe book to be ordered before you start designing, otherwise you could find you get in a bit of a muddle. If you’re using lots of different dishes and cuisines, it might be best to structure it like a meal — so all the starters and appetisers first, then main courses, before finishing with those great desserts, and even cheese board ideas. If you’re focusing on one area, such as desserts, maybe try having a section or chapter that explores one main ingredient at a time.
Once you’ve decided on your book structure, we suggest you present your recipes in the order below. This will make sure everything looks consistent throughout your recipe book and is nice and easy to follow when it’s time to start cooking:
Title
Time it takes
Number of servings
Introduction
Equipment list
Ingredients and measurements
Step-by-step method, written in a logical order
How to serve
Family/pro tips.
Cook your way through the book
There’s no better research you can do for your recipe book than cooking every single dish you want to feature in it. It’s the perfect way to double-check exactly how each recipe works before you get creative on the pages. It also means you’ll be able to add in any extra tips and notes to give the recipe more flavour (literally!). You’ll also need to cook all the dishes so you can take great pics of them — check out our guide to food photography so you get the best possible photos for your book. This can be a great way to get other members of the family involved too, whether you’re cooking together or over a video chat. Remember to also take photos of you having fun cooking the dishes and see if you can find any old snaps of people cooking the same recipes back in the day. It’s great to mix and match photos of the same dish made in different eras.
Time to get creative
Now you’ve tested all your dishes to perfection and got the perfect photos of them, it’s time to get creative with your pages. As well as the pre-designed templates, we’ve got a huge selection of clip art, frames, masks, and more to make your recipe book totally unique. Pick your own backgrounds, add your foodie pictures, then layer up with clip art and fonts to bring your recipes to life. Remember to come up with an awesome name for your book as well. If it’s a family affair, why not try something like ‘Cooking with the Smiths’ or if it’s a present for your partner maybe ‘Dinner for two’? You’ll also need to choose your favourite photo for the front cover, or if you’d like a multi-photo layout, there’s even the option to create a collage of all your pics.
Focus on the details
You’re nearly there! It’s just time to add in those tiny details that make the book perfect and truly personalised. We always think it’s a great idea to scan in some old, handwritten recipes from grandmas, aunties, uncles, mums – the whole gang. You can use these as background images to really give the book that personal touch. You can also use our text editor to add in quotes and sayings your family always use too. If you want to give your book a real foodie feel, use the font ‘amatic sc’ and ‘open sans’ against our chalkboard background.
Tell your story
Adding personal anecdotes throughout your book will make it even more unique and interesting to read. You could recount the first time you cooked a recipe, or talk about the trip you were on when you first fell in love with the dish and had to recreate it at home. There could also be a legendary family story you need to get down on paper to be saved forever. Adding in the backstory behind the recipes will make your book so much more special.
Proof, proof, proof
We mean it. Proofread your book from front to back and then back to front. Maybe ask someone else to lend a fresh eye to it for an extra check. Spelling mistakes, grammar errors, and typos are something you’ll notice immediately when the book comes back from the printers. Also, pay extra special attention to the recipes. You need to definitely make sure your weights and measurements are all totally correct. Watch out for any ‘tbsp’ and ‘tsp’ mix ups too.
So there you are — creating your own recipe book isn’t that hard at all! With bonusprint we’ve made it as easy as possible. You just need to find a template that you like, add in your favourite recipes and foodie photos, and send it to print. We hope this blog has given you inspiration to make your very own recipe book. All you need to do now is click the button below and get creating.