The Family Cookbook Project

Category: How to Ideas

  • The Importance Of Writing A Great Recipe Title

    The Importance Of Writing A Great Recipe Title

    The title of your recipe is the single most critical part of the entire recipe. Why? Because your title acts as the headline, and just like any headline, it carries an immense power and responsibility.

    Consider how you flip through a cookbook when searching for a recipe. You don’t typically read every page from beginning to end like you would with a novel. Instead, you quickly scan the pages, looking for a recipe title or an appealing photo that draws your attention and piques your interest.

    Out of all the elements in a recipe, the title has the greatest ability to capture a reader’s attention. Its job is to hook the reader, enticing them to dive into the recipe. A compelling title can transform a casual browser into a reader, and ultimately into someone who tries your dish.

    So, what makes an effective recipe title? Here are a few key things to keep in mind:

    1. Catch Attention – Just like a well-crafted headline, your title should be eye-catching and engaging.
    2. Describe the Dish – While a title like “Gruel” may make sense to your family, it’s not informative for everyone else. Including the main ingredient and method can add clarity. For instance, “Baked Hamburger Gravy” is far more descriptive than “Gruel,” giving potential readers a better idea of what the dish is.
    3. Be Unique – If you’ve seen a title elsewhere, it’s likely too generic. Aim for a fresh, distinctive title that will stand out from the rest.
    4. Include the Source – In family cookbooks, adding a person’s name can give the recipe more significance. Titles like “Grandma’s Apple Pie” or “Lou’s Lemon Bars” help connect readers to the personal origin of the recipe, though this may be less helpful for those unfamiliar with your family gatherings.
    5. Highlight the Appeal – Make sure your title conveys why this recipe is worth making. For example, you’re not just selling a steak, you’re selling the “sizzle”—the benefits and appeal of your recipe.

    Titles that focus on the reader’s cooking and eating desires are far more effective at drawing them into the recipe. A well-crafted title makes it clear which need your recipe meets. Whether it’s indulgence, health, quick preparation, or elegance, every reader has different priorities.

    Let’s look at these examples of chocolate chip cookie recipes:

    • “Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies”
    • “Quick ‘n’ Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies”
    • “Grandma’s Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies”
    • “Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies”

    Each of these titles speaks to different needs and appeals to different readers. As you can see, the words you choose for your recipe title can significantly impact who will be interested.

    With a bit of creativity and thoughtful wording, your recipe titles can shine, drawing readers in and giving your recipes the attention they deserve.

     

    Bill Rice is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook (Available on Amazon), both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter TikTok, YouTube and Pinterest!

  • How To Make A Wedding Cookbook

    How To Make A Wedding Cookbook

    Here’s an idea for a truly unique wedding gift for a special couple – a printed cookbook filled with the bride and groom’s favorite family recipes and photos. It’s a great way to bring both families together before the wedding, makes a wonderful bridal shower theme, can be used as a wedding favor and gets the new couple cooking with family favorite recipes.

    Here’s how to create your own wedding cookbook:

    It starts with a bridal shower.

    One thing every new bride to be needs is great recipes to feed her family, especially with everyone needing to stay at home so much more these days. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your FamilyCookbookProject.com cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone’s email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will always wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother’s to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom with have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project’s Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom’s recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Select a cover – Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction – The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower. An introduction can be used wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos – Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Print your cookbook – Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook.

    Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, you can print additional cookbooks and give them to everyone attending the wedding!

     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook (Available on Amazon) and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook, both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

  • How To Make A Bridal Shower Cookbook

    How To Make A Bridal Shower Cookbook

    Here is a great idea next you need to plan a bridal shower for a friend or family member – a bridal cookbook!

    One thing every new bride to be needs is great recipes to feed her family. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    Here’s how to do it:

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your family cookbook project cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone’s email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will also wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother’s to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom with have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project’s Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom’s recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Cover – Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction – The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower. An introduction can be used wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos – Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Finally, it is time to print your cookbook. Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook. Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, try creating a Wedding Cookbook for your family and friends!

     

     

     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook (Available on Amazon) and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook, both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

  • Anatomy of a Great Recipe

    Anatomy of a Great Recipe

    One of the keys to a great family cookbook is to have great recipes that your family and friends have come to love. Here are some simple tips to help you capture the magic of the food you make.

    1. Use catchy titles. Using a catchy title will make your recipe sound more interesting. It is more interesting to people when they see the title “Gooey Triple Chocolate Cake” rather than just “Chocolate Cake”. When you are writing a title for a recipe, try to think of not only what the final dish will be, but what makes it special as well.

    2. Include photos. Using images in your recipes can allow the person reading your cookbook to see what the final dish will look like and give then a guidepost to follow. Next time you make one of your special dishes, snap a quick photo and add it to your recipe the next time you log in.

    3. Be specific with your Ingredients. For many cooks, include a can of crushed tomatoes in your recipe and they know exactly what you mean or maybe not. Tell them to include a 12oz can of crushed tomatoes and everyone will know exactly what your recipe needs.

    4. Use step by step instructions. You might have made this recipe a thousand times, but someone new will need detailed directions for how to do it. Remember to include pan sizes, cooking times, the order that ingredients are added and how to tell when a dish is done. Also adding how many servings a recipe can make will help with meal planning.

    5. Add personal notes. One of the things that make a family cooks so important is that it helps to capture the family traditions. Include a note with each recipe about how you first were introduced to the recipe and when it is typically served in your household. It makes the recipe more interesting and more meaningful to later generations.

     

    Chip Lowell is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest!

  • How to Use Scanned Recipes in Your Family Cookbook

    How to Use Scanned Recipes in Your Family Cookbook

    Many computer Printers also include a scanner that can be used for recipes

    Many of us have old recipe boxes that contain many many recipes that are written in the handwriting of someone from the past that we would like to preserve and include it our cookbook. 

    At FamilyCookbookProject.com, you can scan a recipe, personal letter or other family treasure and include it in your cookbook very easily. Here’s how: First you need to scan the recipe card or find someone who can do this for you. Many people have home scanners that are very easy to use – or know someone who has one. 

    When scanning, make sure the scanner saves the image as a JPEG file (check the settings). If it saves it as a PDF, you will need to open the PDF and “save as” a JPEG. Another setting you need to check is the image quality. Usually 150 to 300 DPI (Dots per Inch) is high enough for including in your cookbook. 

    Scanning actually creates a photo image of your recipe card that we can import into your cookbook software. Now your scanned image can be simply placed into your cookbook as you would any other photo.  

    Collections of Scanned Recipes 

    Sometimes family cookbook editors was their entire cookbooks to be a collection of scanned recipes. While not impossible, this can be a lot of work for the editor. 

    The problem with scanned recipes is that the cookbook software system can not read the text in the image to create titles and indexes and other parts of the cookbook. The computer just sees them as photos. 

     So you have two options: 

    You can include the scanned images as photos attached to recipes that you have typed into the system. This way the original item is included above the typed version. I don’t know about you, but my mother’s cursive writing is not always the most easy thing to read (sorry mom) and recipe cards are often smudged with food from meals passed and not always easy to read. 

    The other option is to enter just the title of the recipe and it’s category and leave the rest of the fields on the “add a recipe” form blank. This will give you the title of the recipe and allow an index to be created. Next upload the scanned image of the recipe and save. This way, the image of your recipe will be the recipe itself.

     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • A Family Reunion Cookbook Brings Families Together

    A Family Reunion Cookbook Brings Families Together

    The Donovan Family Reunion

    Few gatherings are as meaningful and memorable as family reunions. As families grow and people go their own ways, family reunions serve to bring us back together. They’re a chance to recombine, share experiences and renew connections.

    One great idea to make your family reunion truly memorable is to create a family cookbook. Everyone knows the best thing about a family reunion is the food! Everyone brings their favorite dishes and shares stories and food and fun.

    There are two different schools of thought on the best way to create a family reunion cookbook. You be the judge on what is best for your family.

    Reunion Specific Cookbook

    Since reunions take a fair amount of time to plan and often center around a theme, choosing a theme centering on food can be a natural choice. Family members are asked to contribute their favorite recipes to a family cookbook that can be distributed at the event. You set a date and ask everyone to contribute the recipes for the food they will be bringing to the event. The cost of printing the cookbooks is included in the cost of the event and everyone receives one the day of the event. This is also a great way to build buzz for your event!

    Reunion Showcase Cookbook

    The other way families create family cookbooks at family reunions is to use the event to show a sample of what a family cookbooks looks like and collect email addresses used to invite contributors.  People will see your excitement and want to participate as well. Find your favorite dishes at the event and ask whoever made them to contribute the recipe to the cookbook. They will be flattered that you asked and look forward to participating.  Set a deadline that will allow you to have your family cookbooks complete so people can give them as gifts for the holidays.

    Some things to consider when creating your reunion cookbook

    During the planning process, many families are looking for a way to communicate effectively via email. Adding lots of people to the sender line of an email list can result in people being left off and not being able to contact specific people or subsets of the list. FamilyCookbookProject.com can help make this easier. Use our Reminder Email Tool and you make it easy to contact some or all of your family members.

    Don’t wait until the last minute. When planning a family reunion cookbook, the event is a fixed date and comes and goes whether your cookbook is ready or not. Now is the time to start working on a family reunion cookbook if your event is in the summer.

    Remember to invite everyone to participate, not only the great cooks! This cookbook is for all the family members so it best to invite everyone to contribute – even if it is only a recipe or two.

    Finally remember family members no longer with us by including their recipes as well. Family cookbooks help to tell the story of our families. Contributors can be not only the present, but from the past as well.

     

     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • How to Make a One-Of-A-Kind Wedding Cookbook

    How to Make a One-Of-A-Kind Wedding Cookbook

    Here’s an idea for a truly unique wedding gift for a special couple – a printed cookbook filled with the bride and groom’s favorite family recipes and photos. It’s a great way to bring both families together before the wedding, makes a wonderful bridal shower theme, can be used as a wedding favor and gets the new couple cooking with family favorite recipes.

    Here’s how to create your own wedding cookbook:

    It starts with a bridal shower.

    One thing every new bride to be needs is great recipes to feed her family, especially with everyone needing to stay at home so much more these days. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your FamilyCookbookProject.com cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone’s email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will always wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother’s to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom with have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project’s Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom’s recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Select a cover – Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction – The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower. An introduction can be used wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos – Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Print your cookbook – Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook.

    Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, you can print additional cookbooks and give them to everyone attending the wedding!

     

    Bill Rice is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • Bring Two Families Together With A Wedding Cookbook

    Bring Two Families Together With A Wedding Cookbook

    Here’s an idea for a truly unique wedding gift for a special couple – a printed cookbook filled with the bride and groom’s favorite family recipes and photos. It’s a great way to bring both families together before the wedding, makes a wonderful bridal shower theme, can be used as a wedding favor and gets the new couple cooking with family favorite recipes.

    Here’s how to create your own wedding cookbook:

    It starts with a bridal shower.

    One thing every new bride to be needs is great recipes to feed her family, especially with everyone needing to stay at home so much more these days. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your FamilyCookbookProject.com cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone’s email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will always wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother’s to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom with have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project’s Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom’s recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Select a cover – Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction – The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower. An introduction can be used wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos – Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Print your cookbook – Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook.

    Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, you can print additional cookbooks and give them to everyone attending the wedding!

     

     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. His son Conor was married in 2021. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook (Available on Amazon) and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook, both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest!

     

  • How to Use Scanned Recipes in Your Family Cookbook

    How to Use Scanned Recipes in Your Family Cookbook

    Many computer Printers also include a scanner that can be used for recipes

    Many of us have old recipe boxes that contain many many recipes that are written in the handwriting of someone from the past that we would like to preserve and include it our cookbook. 

    At FamilyCookbookProject.com, you can scan a recipe, personal letter or other family treasure and include it in your cookbook very easily. Here’s how: First you need to scan the recipe card or find someone who can do this for you. Many people have home scanners that are very easy to use – or know someone who has one. 

    When scanning, make sure the scanner saves the image as a JPEG file (check the settings). If it saves it as a PDF, you will need to open the PDF and “save as” a JPEG. Another setting you need to check is the image quality. Usually 150 to 300 DPI (Dots per Inch) is high enough for including in your cookbook. 

    Scanning actually creates a photo image of your recipe card that we can import into your cookbook software. Now your scanned image can be simply placed into your cookbook as you would any other photo.  

    Collections of Scanned Recipes 

    Sometimes family cookbook editors was their entire cookbooks to be a collection of scanned recipes. While not impossible, this can be a lot of work for the editor. 

    The problem with scanned recipes is that the cookbook software system can not read the text in the image to create titles and indexes and other parts of the cookbook. The computer just sees them as photos. 

     So you have two options: 

    You can include the scanned images as photos attached to recipes that you have typed into the system. This way the original item is included above the typed version. I don’t know about you, but my mother’s cursive writing is not always the most easy thing to read (sorry mom) and recipe cards are often smudged with food from meals passed and not always easy to read. 

    The other option is to enter just the title of the recipe and it’s category and leave the rest of the fields on the “add a recipe” form blank. This will give you the title of the recipe and allow an index to be created. Next upload the scanned image of the recipe and save. This way, the image of your recipe will be the recipe itself.

     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • How to Make a One-Of-A-Kind Wedding Cookbook

    How to Make a One-Of-A-Kind Wedding Cookbook

    Here’s an idea for a truly unique wedding gift for a special couple – a printed cookbook filled with the bride and groom’s favorite family recipes and photos. It’s a great way to bring both families together before the wedding, makes a wonderful bridal shower theme, can be used as a wedding favor and gets the new couple cooking with family favorite recipes.

    Here’s how to create your own wedding cookbook:

    It starts with a bridal shower.

    One thing every new bride needs is great recipes to feed her family, especially with everyone needing to stay at home so much more these days. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your FamilyCookbookProject.com cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone’s email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will always wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother’s to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom will have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project’s Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom’s recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Select a cover – Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction – The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower. An introduction can be used to wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos – Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Print your cookbook – Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from the bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook.

    Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, you can print additional cookbooks and give them to everyone attending the wedding!

     

    Bill Rice is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook (Available on Amazon), both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!