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Build-Your-Own Cookbook

January 30, 2008

My friend Suzanne pointed me towards a new online service where you can upload your own recipes (or pick and choose from their offerings) to create a customized cookbook. TasteBook is partnered with Epicurious.com, so all the archived recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appétit are available to you from their site, as are guest chef recipes and more.

TasteBook’s interface is beautiful and intuitive — it’s incredibly easy to upload your own recipe if you already have it typed up. I literally signed up for the service and created my first recipe page (with my own photo!) in less than 5 minutes.

Here’s the low-res preview of my recipe that the site provides:

The only downside I see is that you can’t customize the photo on the cover of the cookbook — that would be the ultimate in personalization. TasteBook suggests making cookbooks for fundraisers, family reunions, and bridal showers (my favorite idea!). Guests were asked to share a recipe with me at my bridal shower, which they did on index cards. How cool would it have been to receive all those recipes as a bound book?

$34.95 gets you a TasteBook with 100 recipes. If you have fewer recipes than that, you get “recipe credits” so you can add more pages to your book at a later date.

Let me know if you use the service: I’m thinking about making a TasteBook based on the cooking I did with my farm share vegetables last year.

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Filed under: Cookbooks

Tags: cooking, farm share, recipe