Creating a Cookbook for Savoring Connections (with Professional Publishing!)

Whether you enjoy cooking or not, meals, traditional dishes, and treats are powerful shared experiences. From sitting around a dinner table with loved ones to being surprised when a friend drops off a homemade treat just for you, there’s just something about food that creates connections.

I think everything special belongs in a book! 🙂 This probably doesn’t surprise you since I’ve been writing about Personalized DIY Books here at Between the Bookends for a year now, touching on topics from preserving your travels in the pages of books to easy digital scrapbooking and creating a daily photo journal in a book, too.

But, have you ever thought about creating a personalized cookbook of favorite recipes to make sure they’re both preserved and shareable?

For Favorite Recipes, Family Collections, or Sharing with Friends

There are many possibilities for a personalized cookbook! Think favorite recipes, family recipes, or sharing new recipes with friends. Create something for yourself, for girlfriends, or for family members. It’s an amazing gift idea, I happen to know!

I made a family cookbook for the first time about 15 years ago, and it was a HUGE HIT! I asked every family member for their three favorite recipes, and included a few of our traditional favorites, too. This turned out amazing for two reasons: 1- We had traditional family recipes all in one place (no more asking for Grandma’s fudge recipe again), and 2- We learned what dishes our other family members love. As it turned out, we all got together the following summer at my sister’s house, and she loved having this cookbook so she knew that she could make everyone’s favorite dish once during the week.

I think this would also be a fun thing to do with friends. Ask each other for favorite Christmas cookie recipes, easy appetizers, best Thanksgiving Day dishes, or breakfasts-for-one. You could certainly include photos of the dishes, but I think it’s more fun to include faces of the friends along with their recipe contributions!

How to Create Your Own Personalized Cookbook

The first thing you’ll need to do to create your own personalized cookbook is decide who the book is for and what you’d like to include in it. Family recipes? Your own favorite recipes? Recipes to share among friends? (What a fun thing to gift everyone for their birthday in the coming year!)

Next, ask for recipes, or collect them on your own. I always ask to have them by a certain date, and I allow some padding in case someone forgets or needs extra time.

Now, it’s time to put them in a book that will be professionally printed! The inks, papers, and bindings are the highest quality available, with gorgeous color printing, so these books will last and last. This Classic Cookbook can be made in a 10×10 or 12×12 size, with either standard binding or a lay-flat binding. Lay-flat costs a little more, but I think it’s so nice for a cookbook you’ll be reading from without hands. 🙂 The standard pages fall open nicely, too, though.

That’s an interior page template on the left and the cover of the book on the right. There are several different page layouts to choose from, so you can mix and match as you like!

You’ll get started by clicking this link to the cookbook template (or if you’d like to design your own, I’ll tell you how to do that, too), then choosing the size and binding type.

TIP: As you enter all the recipes and photos in the designated photo or text place holders, keep an eye out for a 50% off sale and place your order then! These sales happen about once a month.

If you have the recipes emailed to you, or if they’re in something like a Word document that you can copy and paste, putting the recipes into the book goes fairly quickly. And even if not, as in my case, and you have to type everything in separately, it’s worth it! 🙂

The software program you’ll use to make your book is very intuitive, but if you’d like a short video tutorial, I have one for you here.

Depending on how many copies of your cookbook you want, you may qualify for a quantity discount (10+ books) when you check out, and you also may like the idea of paying for the books a little over time. There’s an option to add a little money in your account for several months before making your purchase (so perfect for Christmastime!), and you get an extra 5% off when you do this, too, so it’s a win-win. Learn more about that savings & accrual option here. (It’s my favorite–I’ve been doing it for years!)

By the way, templates come and go, so don’t wait too long to make your cookbook!

Thinking Outside the Template Box?

Using that Classic Cookbook template is definitely the quickest and easiest way to get your cookbook created and ready for professional printing, but if you’re looking for a little more flexibility on pages and/or creativity, you don’t have to confine yourself to a template, and you can add some extra personalization, too.

This is my go-to because I like both the flexibility and the creativity! If you think you might like it, too, you can explore these three things: 1- this video tutorial on how to use Artisan software to make a page, 2- the huge variety of digital art you can use to create your cookbook (and you can filter by free collections at the left), and 3- all the information about Artisan, including computer requirements. Then create away!!

A Unique Gift Idea

Sharing and enjoying meals, dishes, and treats together is a gift by itself, but putting a special collection of well-loved recipes into a book you can gift is even better! Don’t forget that you can gift a cookbook to yourself as well as gifting it to others. (I’m working on a sourdough book right now that’s going to include a lot of notes I’ve taken as I’ve tried to figure out sourdough!) #gifttomyself

I’d love it if you gifted me a photo of your new cookbook, too! My Facebook page is for exactly that–celebrating what we create and accomplish! I’d love to see your cookbook photo there! Happy cooking, and happy book-making!