 Have you ever wanted to write your own cookbook? I have. I've often
thought about it, actually. I have 3-ring bingers all over the house
full of different categories of recipes. When TasteBook
contacted Type-A Mom to review their product, I jumped at the
opportunity. The chance to write my own cookbook? Sign me up! Would
someone in your life love to have her own cookbook? You can either
design it for her or get her a gift certificate to design it herself. I
can't think of a better gift. (So if you know me, please take note -
I'd like a TasteBook gift certificate for Christmas.)
View my TasteBook and buy a Tastebook
There are three steps in designing a TasteBook: building the Tastebook, receiving the TasteBook, and ordering more recipes. The TasteBook website has a great set of videos that guide you through the process.
Building a TasteBook
Obviously, you have to have recipes. I wanted my TasteBook
to reflect my family's favorite recipes, so I chose to dig out all of
my recipe cards and type them in. Honestly, that was a royal pain. I
think it took about ten hours to type and edit the recipes. On the
other hand, it was important to me. I really wanted it to be my recipes, so my husband and I spent a week's worth of evenings typing and editing recipes.
TasteBook will also allow you to import recipes from Epicurious.com or
from the TasteBook database. There are more than 50,000 recipes in
their database, and it includes recipes from FoodNetwork.com,
AllRecipes.com, and a bunch of other well-known web sites. There are
also premade TasteBooks that you can buy in about thirty seconds.
I think I'm going to make a second TasteBook with Cooking from
Scratch recipes using a combination of my own recipes and those from
the database. I just searched for "bread machine" recipes and got 83 results , all of which look promising.
What I like about building a TasteBook -
The first thing that I love about the building process is that it uses my recipes.
Every single page of the finished book will include a recipe that I
love to cook and love to eat. There won't be any filler, and there
won't be any recipes that I think, "We could do without that one." They
are all recipes that my family loves. Want to see them? View my TasteBook here.
When you design your TasteBook, you can choose one of three prices:
$19.99, $29.95, and $34.99. Each price corresponds to a certain number
of recipe pages. Of course, I went for the biggest one, which is 100
recipes. We typed in 53 of our favorites, and we have 47 credits
remaining. It's awesome that we didn't have to come up with 100 right
away. As we find new recipes that we adore, we can type them up and
have them printed any time. 
Every TasteBook is customizable. You can choose a cover from six pages
of choices, and you can include a dedication page. Our dedication page
has this picture on it with a message for our daughter. I'm hoping to
pass my TasteBook down to her some day. There are also a lot of options
on each individual page. You can input ingredients and instructions, of
course, but there are also areas for a description, your own photo,
notes, yield, and more. If you leave them blank, they don't show up,
but if you add them, they make your final book look much more polished
and professional.
What I don't like about building a TasteBook -
These things pale in comparison to the fact that I'm getting a
professional-looking cookbook that is all my own recipes, but I do want
to tell you about the glitches I found. The process of inputting your
own recipes takes forever. Typing the
recipes into the system isn't bad, but editing is cumbersome.
You have to look at each recipe, click the "Edit" button, look at it
again, make your corrections, save it, go back to the main recipe list,
and then go to the next recipe. It took me hours to get the book
looking the way I wanted. This wouldn't be an issue if you were
importing recipes rather than typing your own.
I would also like to be able to edit the chapter topics and
pictures. All of the chapter topics didn't make sense for my book. We
eat virtually no fish at my house, so that section is totally blank for
us. Also, I was thinking about making a Cooking from Scratch TasteBook,
and I would like to have categories like "Canning and Preserving" and
"Make Ahead Mixes".
Receiving the TasteBook
Please check back in a week or so. I'll update this section when my book arrives. I can't wait to see it!
Ordering More Recipes using your TasteBook credits
Please check back in three or four weeks. I'll update this section after I've reordered recipes.
The Bottom Line on TasteBook
If my TasteBook arrives looking half as great as it did in the online
preview, I'll be ordering another one. And another. And another. And I
might give a bunch more for Christmas presents. I'm that impressed.
Hopefully, my kitchen will some day look like this.
View my TasteBook and Buy your own
Tara is a freelance writer/editor and high school teacher who
prides herself on being a little crunchy and a lot quirky. She loves
food, photography, and crafts, but really Feels like home when she’s being silly with her husband and their toddler.
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