Collecting family recipes—from your grandmother’s special-occasion cakes to your favorite rainy-day comfort foods—creates a unique chronicle of your family history. Add photos, memorable stories, and a little creativity, and you’ve got a perfect wedding, reunion, or housewarming gift and a tangible way to pass traditions from one generation to the next.
Want to raise money for your club? Put together a cookbook with recipes from your PTA, neighborhood association, or other group and create an effective, collectible fundraising tool.
What you need
All you need to create a professional-looking final product is a computer, a printer, a scanner, and basic desktop publishing software or a downloadable cookbook template (like the one you’ll find on the HP Activity Center). Then, follow the steps below to turn your recipes into a keepsake that will be treasured (and used!) for years to come.
Choose a theme
To help you select and organize recipes, try focusing on a central idea rather than trying to create a master volume of every recipe in your family’s or group’s repertoire. This approach also sets the stage for additional cookbooks in the future. Consider themes such as these:
- A holiday or event: A Garcia Family Christmas or A Picnic in the Park with the Davis Little League
- A type of food: The Smith Family Sweet Tooth or 50 Ways the Patels Cook Potatoes
- A favorite style of cuisine: Around the World with the Dawsons or The McDonnell’s Cook Italian
Your theme should be broad enough to generate plenty of family contributions, but focused enough to give your cookbook a distinct identity.
Round up the recipes
Make it easy for all of your family members to submit recipes by creating a simple template you can send by e-mail. Explain your theme (if you’ve chosen one) and, for each recipe, be sure to ask everyone to include:
- A personalized title that includes a family member’s name
- A complete list of ingredients with measurements (even if they’re approximate)
- Step-by-step instructions for preparation
- Approximate number of servings the recipe will make
•Ideas for presentation or accompaniments
- Family stories or memories associated with the recipe
- Photos of the finished dish or the family member it came from
The HP Activity Center features a free cookbook page template that you can either print out and send to family members or use to type in the recipes they send to you.
You can also direct family members to the HP Activity Center’s printable recipe cards, which they can print and fill out by hand. When you receive the completed cards, you can scan them and add them to your cookbook pages for an old-fashioned, handwritten touch.
Bring it all together
Once you’ve collected your recipes, cut-and-paste, scan, or type them into one document. And consider organizing them into chapters for easy reference.
You might follow the style of traditional cookbooks and organize by courses, or arrange them by categories within your chosen theme. You can also choose family-focused chapters that are organized by "branches" of the family tree Or, list recipes chronologically and include a little snippet of family history (“Sweet Potato Pie, which the Baileys made every year in the ‘50s for the Walnut Avenue block party”).
For each recipe, include an extra page for photos and any family stories you’ve collected. It’s also a good idea to include space for people to enter the new stories that are sure to come once people start using your cookbook.
Print and bind your book
Once you have all of your cookbook pages ready to go, peruse each page to make sure everything is in order and in the right spot. Then follow these tips for your printing and supplies:
- Print your pages on high-quality, heavyweight paper to ensure a long-lasting cookbook.
- Choose paper with a matte finish, which will be less likely to pick up fingerprints and smudges than those with a glossy finish.
- Use a heavier paper stock for the front and back covers, or laminate these pages for durability.
- If you want to go all out, consider laminating all pages to protect them from spills and stains.
To bind your pages together, a copy shop that offers spiral binding is your best bet. It’s inexpensive, durable, and allows the reader to lay the book flat for hands-free reading while they’re cooking. Or, try one of these ideas if you’d like to bind the book yourself:
- Use a hole punch to make three holes evenly spaced along the left-hand edge of your printed pages. Then, secure the pages together with metal binder rings.
- Use a hole punch to make six holes (grouped in three pairs) along the left-hand edge of your pages. Then, use three pieces of string or ribbon to tie the pages together from front cover to back cover (see illustration).
- Use a store-bought three-ring binder to compile your cookbook. You can also use clear plastic sleeves to protect your recipe pages.
Enjoy a family feast!
Once you’ve completed your family cookbook, take time to read through it and try out some of the recipes. Invite family and friends over for a feast made entirely from recipes in your cookbook, and give copies away as gifts. And be sure to save your files so you can print more copies and add recipes for future editions. You’ll be amazed how something so simple and inexpensive can turn into such a valuable piece of family history.
Printable version