Creating Homemade Cookbooks for Holiday Gifts

The holidays are often too filled with material excess that clouds the spirit of celebration. Homemade gifts are more thoughtful expressions of love and friendship. Creating a homemade cookbook and recipe exchange is a great way to mark the holidays, share good food and connect to those around you. Using a refillable binder allows you to add recipes every year and create a holiday tradition.

Creating a homemade cookbook is a way to gather favorite recipes and they can be personalized with recipes that cater to the tastes of the recipient. They are inexpensive and contributions can come from each family member as a collective gift.

Any binder that accommodates removable pages can be used to make a homemade cookbook. It should be large enough to receive recipes year after year but also small enough so that filling it with the first entries doesn't become overwhelming. Usually a 1 ½" to 2" binder from any office supply store is suitable and cost just a few dollars. Using a binder with inside pockets creates a helpful spot to keep notes on techniques and cooking supplies. You should also purchase tabbed dividers so recipes can be arranged by category. These come in packets from 6 to 24 and colorful varieties. You won't need too many tabs so a smaller count pack is fine for this project. You can also pick up standard printing paper here for the recipe pages.

The binder can be decorated front and back with specialty papers, holiday paper cut outs or festive markers. Craft stores and scrapbook stores both carry a wide variety of these items at reasonable prices. The theme of the decoration can be anything that has a personal touch from a winter snow scene to simply writing a title like "Anna's Cookbook." The important thing is to just have fun and keep in mind that the uniqueness of a homemade cookbook is what makes it special, not the quality of your artwork. Little "mistakes" like ink blobs can easily become a fun accent if you use your creativity.

The best way to produce the pages of the homemade cookbook is to use some simple computer programs like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher. You can create a template page in either of these programs that has a customized header and footer like "Anna's Cookbook Cookie Recipes" or "Anna's Cookbook Soup Collection."

Once you have a template, it's time to start collecting recipes for your homemade cookbook. This is the part of the project that takes the most time and reflects the most thought. A good way to start is to look at a commercial cookbook from your kitchen shelf. Browse the categories and choose half a dozen that you would like to include such as soups, appetizers, salads, etc. Label your tabbed dividers with the categories you've chosen and place them in the binder.

Start finding one recipe for each category. If you have a recipe box or personal recipe collection you can pull ideas from there, especially if the recipient has a favorite among your dishes. Or you can find endless, creative recipes from the internet. Wherever the recipe originates, you now have to transfer it onto your page template. You can type it in or copy and paste from an online resource. After you've gotten the basics of the recipe into you template you can then adjust the layout so it's attractive and easy to read. It's also a nice idea to cite your sources so the recipient knows where the delicious ideas come from. If some recipes are from the internet include the web site address so that more recipes can be found there.

Once you feel you've collected enough recipes and created a page for each it's time to print them out. It's always a good idea to print one page first as a test so you can be sure you like the layout and that it works well in the homemade cookbook. Once all the pages are printed, simply hole punch them to fit the binder, sort by category and place them in the cookbook. Now you've created a beautiful and nourishing gift - a homemade cookbook! For an extra touch, you can make one of the recipes from the cookbook to be given at the same time, like banana bread or cookies. Each year you can give another recipe or two or one for each category so that the gift of a homemade cookbook becomes a holiday tradition of passing on delicious, nutritious recipes.