My cute make-your-own recipe book

This is a project that I've been working on and off for a week or two now, and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

I get annoyed having all my favourite recipes spread amongst numerous cookbooks and it's at the back of my mind that if anything were to happen to me, Mitch wouldn't know any of my tried and true recipes, selected from years of experience, or where to find them. (Not that I'd ever expect him to make cakes and biscuits but he would have to make dinner.) Is this morbid? Mitch thinks it is but I'm always thinking "OK, if I were to die suddenly, what could I do to make things easier for Mitch to cope with the girls." For example, I have a slim folder with all of our bank details and mortgage details and forthnightly budget and monthly menu and monthly shopping list etc in it for easy access.

Anyway, back to the topic. My answer to the "dilemma" is of course to write my own recipe book. I've tried a few different ways over the years but never been really satisfied with the final result, until now.

Presenting my "Sweet Favourites" recipe book for all my cake and biscuit needs.

I started with a A5 sized art sketch book. Mine was $4.75 from a newsagent but I have seen ones for $2 from "cheap" shop. I have tried different notebooks over the years and this is the one that I liked the best. This is because I prefer the blank pages to notebooks with lines and I find that sketch books have a nicer quality and thicker paper which is necessary if you are writing on both sides.

I divided it into sections with tabs for easy referral which is something that I haven't done in the past attempts, but which I think is really helpful. I prettied each page divider up by glueing scrapbooking paper and felt ribbon onto a page in the notebook because of course it's got to be nice to look at as well.

Here is my Cake page....

and my Biscuits and Slices page....

and my Scones and Batters page...

and my Desserts page....

and my Sweets page.

On the other side of each divider page I glued textured cardboard in the same colour as on the other side (I used a different colour for each section) which helped make the stick out tab stronger, then pasted a trimmed down page on top for a table of contents. I also numbered each page, not including the dividers, so that if I open to the Biscuits page and want to make No28. Anzac Biscuits (which I did today) I know to go to page 28. I did not start the page numbers again for each section, but kept them going through the whole book. I left 26 blank pages for the Cakes and Biscuits, 19 pages for the Batters, 17 pages for the Desserts and 9 pages for the Sweets.

I've started writing in my favourite recipes using my neatest writing (as I expect to keep this for a long time, this is THE recipe book) and a water and fade proof pen. This is important because in some of my earliest recipe books I can't even read the recipe anymore, through either fading or being spilled on (and washed away). Add a pretty fabric cover and you're done.

I now plan on making a new one for my meals, maybe in blues and greens and chocolates. I think I'll divide it up into sections like "Soups", "Light Meals", "Comfort Food and Casseroles", "Side Dishes", "Meat Dishes" and "Pastas". That should make it easier to plan my menu for the different seasons as well.

I actually think this would make a lovely present for your child as they leave home or become an adult or get married, so they can always have their favourite recipes that they grew up with, with them.
If anyone wants me to do a tutorial on making the fabric cover, just leave a comment asking. It's pretty straight forward though.