Make your own recipe book - has anyone done this.

[Lizcat]

I love to cook and I copy the top recipes from magazines into a ring binder, just like my mum does. When I became an adult any I wanted from my mums collection I had to copy.

I have a hankering to create a book for DD to take with her when she eventually flies the nest and have found some web sites where you can do this. Has anyone else tried it ? Did you take photos of your creations to go with the recipes?

I haven't done it but it sounds a lovely idea. Could you include some recipes that you've made with your DD so she gets some reminders of her childhood - fairy cakes or something like that?

When I left home, my mum gave me a small exercise book in which she'd written down lots of her and my grandma's recipes and she included all my favourite meals.

I love that book and still have it 20 years later and I'm sure that contributed to my love of cooking as I learnt to make family recipes.

It now sits alongside my overflowing recipe folder stuffed with torn out pages from magazines and newspapers, internet print outs and cryptic handwritten notes and typed up recipes I've swapped with friends!

I've often thought making my own recipe book and using all my family favourites but have never got round to it. Also DP bastard laughed at me when I suggested making one...

I say go for it as your DD will treasure it and I think it'd be nice to add some photos - I always like pictures in cookery books so I know what to aim for!

I'm doing one for DD, as well as a diary of her early years (as my mum did neither and never taught me to cook and could never remember any answers to questions I had about my early years.

I'm just using exercise books. At the moment she is just a baby so not writing her favourites in there, more the staples like my foolproof yorkshire puds and steak pie recipes, plus some from my own childhood that my granny made. Later on I will add her favourites.

I know the packages make the recipes all look good, but there is nothing better than coming across a recipe in your mum or gran's handwriting ...

i have a notebook I keep recepies in - both others peoples and my own ones.

Dd1 is 11 and in the summer she got a notebook a bit like mine (A5 hardback) and hascopied out her faves and added a few.

Great idea, I say go forit but get dd involved too.

My mum bought a book called 'family recipes' from a Car Boot sale years ago. A blank book that you added your own recipes to. It only had one recipe it it, for a fruit cake (written in very old lady shaky handwriting).

Mum added her recipes for Bread Pudding and Granny Faggots and passed the book onto my sister who added her Baked Cheesecake (family foods that I love)

The book is now mine and I've added lots of cake recipes, plus a few firm favourites that I make for DH and DD. I'll add some more, but also make sure there are still pages for DD to add her own in years to come. I need to get off my arse and add things I do automatically, like Stews n stuff, not just those I need to refer to.

I'm not usually sentimental, I'm terrible for throwing 'stuff' away, but this gift from my mum is one of my most treasured (especially as no-one else in the family knows her Bread Pudding recipe - It would have died with her, now it wont).