How to Make Your Own Cookbook

What is a TasteBook? It's a high quality, hardback cookbook which you can personalize with your own recipes and pictures. It makes a cool housewarming gift and offers a new take on homemade gifts from the kitchen. Whether you want to add your own recipes or search from a selection of over 20,000 other awesome recipes for your TasteBook, you'll never run out of ideas!

This is the coolest idea. Seriously. TasteBook gives you, the amateur chef without a publisher's printing budget, the ability to make your own cookbook. This is a fabulous thing, whether you're looking for cool housewarming gifts, gifts for a cook, or a way to catalogue all of your own personal favourite recipes in a more organised manner than, say, a pile of scrap paper in the corner. The only downfall I can see at this point in time is that they don't yet ship outside of the United States.

What if you're less of a practised chef/recipe writer and more the type of person who likes to find the perfect recipe in the never ending field of recipes already out there? No problem! TasteBook has partnered up with the delicious epicurious.com to offer over 20,000 recipes, including ones from Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazine. TasteBook allows you to search and add recipes from a huge catalogue of well-known chefs, magazines, and recipe websites. As mentioned these include, but are not limited to, Bon Appétit, Gourmet, and a whole host of celebrity chef personalities. You can even connect to your epicurious.com recipe box and import recipes to your TasteBook.

So what is the final product like then? Your TasteBook will come in a 26 ring binder measuring 11 x 8 ½ inches, inside of which can be up to 100 high-quality printed 10 ¼ x 7 inch pages of recipes. There are ten tabbed chapter markers (e.g. vegetables, desserts, etc...), which makes finding your recipes that bit easier.

Each TasteBook comes with up to 100 recipes, which can be ordered at any time. This means, for instance, if you order your TasteBook with only 50 recipes then you will still have 50 more pages to order whenever you want (the only additional cost is a small shipping fee of $1.95 for up to 25 pages). Since the ring binder that holds the TasteBook pages can be opened easily, you can simply pop the new recipe pages in where you deem fit. The other benefit to this binder format is that you can take the recipes out whenever you want... so if you're messy like me then you can just take that single page to the counter to ruin decorate with food stains specimens, rather than the whole book.

If you'd rather choose a TasteBook with recipes pre-selected by the TasteBook team, you can still create your own title for the book as well as choose from one of over 50 different cover images. You can even add some of your own recipes to a pre-selected recipe book and include your own photos for your recipes as well.

So how do you make your own cookbook?

The process couldn't be much easier if it tried, as it's all based on a simple drag and drop process (find a recipe you like and drag it into the category you've created). You simply search their catalogue and select the recipes you like, or add your own and upload photos to match. Once you've added the recipes you want included in the final product, you choose a cover and title for the book. That's pretty much it, really!

I love the part about being able to include your own photos for the recipes you've personally written and and added. This leads me to images of family picnics and holiday dinners from the 1970s, when Grandpa used to wear that silly hat. Talk about a cool and somewhat homemade kitchen gift idea for the whole family, filled with both great memories and recipes!

You can even share your TasteBook online with friends and family and they can then add their own recipes to your book online! The whole concept is just a really cool idea, whether you're looking for the most cool housewarming gift on the planet or just want to make your own cookbook to house the recipes which currently live in that aforementioned pile in the corner. But (hey, am I sounding like an infomercial yet?) TasteBooks aren't just for cute housewarming gifts! If you're thinking about how to make a church cookbook or that sort of thing, a TasteBook could be the perfect solution. Why not give a TasteBook to a chef as a gift (they're impossible to shop for)? Be creative and you can come up with a whole bunch of cool ideas for these easy to make cookbooks...

Interested? Check out the TasteBook website for more information (and even video tutorials on how to make these personalised cookbooks).