Recipe Card Maker

How to make a recipe card

1. Paste the recipe into the box: copy it from a recipe website, a notes app, a family email or a text you typed out from an old card. It is split as soon as you paste. Lines under a heading such as Ingredients, Method, Directions or Instructions go where the heading says. Without headings, lines that start with a quantity (1 1/2 cups, ½ tsp, 200 g, a pinch) are ingredients and the first line that reads like an instruction starts the method. Bullets and step numbers are removed; the card numbers the steps again.
2. Check the fields. Every part is a normal text box: fix a line, add the serving count, the prep and cook times and a “From the kitchen of” line. Each non-empty line of the paste ends up in exactly one field, so nothing is lost, but the split cannot read meaning: if a blog wrote “Mix 200 g flour with the butter” as one sentence, that stays a step, and you may want to add 200 g flour to the ingredients.
3. Pick a design and a size. The preview is the card as it prints. Body text starts at 10 to 12 pt and steps down to fit one side, but never below 9 pt. When the recipe still does not fit, it continues on the back of the card, and a very long one goes on to a second card.
4. Download. The PDF sheet puts the cards on A4 or US Letter with corner cut marks. The card PDF is one card at its true size, for a printer that takes 4×6 or A6 card directly. The PNG is the side on show at 300 dpi, for a photo print shop or a digital recipe binder.

How to make a family recipe book

1. Gather the recipes first. Ask each relative for two or three dishes they are known for, by email or as a photo of the old card, and type or paste them in one at a time. The splitter above turns a pasted recipe into fields; check them, choose a section (Starters, Mains, Sides, Baking, Desserts, Drinks, or one of your own such as Christmas Eve or Grandma’s) and press Add to cookbook. The card editor is then free for the next one.
2. Put them in order. In the cookbook below the card, move a recipe up or down within its section, or pick another section for it. Sections with no recipes are left out of the book.
3. Make the cover. Give the book a title and a subtitle (“The Hansen family kitchen, 1962 to today”) and, if you like, a photo: an old picture of the family at the table, or of a stained handwritten card, makes the cover personal. Add a dedication for its own page after the cover.
4. Pick a format and download. One PDF holds the cover, the dedication, a contents page, a divider page for each section and every recipe starting on its own page. A long recipe runs on to the next page with “(continued)” at the top. The contents numbers are taken from where each recipe actually lands, so they stay right when you add, remove or reorder recipes.
5. Collect from several people. Export cookbook (.json) saves the whole collection as a small file. Send it to a sister, she imports it, adds her recipes and sends it back. Import replaces the cookbook in that browser, so export your own copy first.

Questions

How do I print a recipe booklet?

Choose A5 booklet on A4 (or Booklet on Letter for 5½ × 8½ in pages). The PDF puts two book pages side by side on each landscape sheet, already in the order a folded booklet needs, and pads the book with blank pages at the end to a multiple of four, because every sheet carries four pages. A 20-page book is 5 sheets: the first carries pages 20 and 1 on the front and 2 and 19 on the back. Print double-sided with “flip on short edge” at 100%, keep the sheets in the order they come out, fold the stack in half along the small marks at the top and bottom edge, and staple twice on the fold. The fold sits 148 mm from the edge of an A4 sheet, past the reach of a normal desk stapler: use a long-reach stapler, or open the stack flat on a piece of cardboard, push an opened stapler through on the fold and bend the staple legs flat by hand. Without a duplex printer, print the odd PDF pages, put the stack back in the tray, and print the even ones; try it with two sheets first.

How many recipes fit in a folded booklet?

Each short recipe takes one page and a long one two or three, plus one divider page per section. On 80 g/m² paper a booklet folds and staples well up to about 10 sheets (40 pages, roughly 25 to 30 recipes). Thicker than that, the inner pages stick out a few millimetres at the open edge (“creep”), which you can trim with a ruler and craft knife, and a desk stapler stops going through. For a big collection choose A4 pages or Letter pages instead: one page per sheet, for a ring binder or a copy shop’s comb or wire binding, which also lets you add pages later. For a nicer cover, print the first PDF page (the first sheet) separately on 160 to 200 g/m² card.

Is there a free family recipe book template?

This is one, and it fills itself in: there is no fixed template with boxes your recipes must fit into. Each recipe is laid out to its own length, in the same design as your cards (classic lined, gingham, modern, typewriter, Christmas holly or botanical), so a printed card box and the book match. It is free, with no sign-up, no watermark and no limit below 300 recipes. If you would rather write the recipes by hand, print blank cards from the card maker above instead.

Can I make the recipe book personal?

Yes: your own title and subtitle, your own photo on the cover, a dedication page, your own section names, and “From the kitchen of …” under each recipe so everyone knows whose dish it is. The prep and cook times and the servings print under the title. What it does not do: photos inside the recipes, and fonts beyond the six designs’ Helvetica, Times and Courier families, which cover English and the Western European languages but not Greek, Cyrillic or emoji (they are left out with a message).

Where is my cookbook kept?

Only in this browser, in its local storage, with the cover photo shrunk to at most 1600 pixels so it fits. Nothing is uploaded, so another device or browser does not see it: use Export and Import to move it. Clear all deletes it from this browser. Clearing the browser’s site data deletes it too, so export a copy of a cookbook you have spent an evening on.

What size is a recipe card?

The two standard sizes in the US are 3×5 in (76 × 127 mm), the original index card, and 4×6 in (102 × 152 mm), which most recipe boxes, dividers and plastic sleeves are now made for, and which also fits a 4×6 photo album. In Europe and Australia the usual card is A6 (105 × 148 mm), the postcard size, which fits a C6 envelope; it is close to 4×6 but 4 mm narrower and 3 mm taller, so A6 cards do not always fit a 4×6 box. Half letter (5½ × 8½ in, 140 × 216 mm) is the size for recipe binders and for recipes with many steps. All four are laid out landscape, the way recipe boxes hold them. On the classic and modern designs a 3×5 card holds about 8 ingredients and 5 short steps on one side at 9 to 10 pt; the bordered designs (gingham, holly, botanical) have a little less room. Past that, the recipe uses the back, or pick 4×6.

How many recipe cards fit on a sheet?

Four 3×5 cards, two 4×6 cards, two A6 cards or one half-letter card per A4 or US Letter sheet. Each card gets cut marks at its corners, 6 mm apart from its neighbours, and nothing is printed closer than 6 mm to the paper edge, because most home printers cannot print right to the edge. That margin is also why four A6 cards do not go on one A4 sheet, even though A4 is exactly four A6: there would be no white edge left for the printer. With “Blank cards” chosen, the free places on the sheet get blank cards in the same design with writing lines; with “Copies”, more copies of your recipe, handy for giving one to each person at a family gathering.

Is there an editable recipe card template?

This is one: every line on the card comes from a text box you can change, and the card redraws as you type. Press Clear and you get the template itself, a blank card with a recipe line, “From the kitchen of”, serves, prep and cook lines and ruled Ingredients and Method columns, to print and fill in by hand. Its back has lines for notes. The six designs (classic lined, gingham, modern minimal, vintage typewriter, Christmas holly and botanical line art) work the same way, so a box of family recipes can be printed in one matching set.

How do I print recipe cards double-sided?

When a recipe needs a back, the PDF sheet has two pages for every sheet: page 1 is the fronts, page 2 the backs, already mirrored so that each back lands behind its own front. In the print dialog choose two-sided printing with “flip on long edge” and 100% scale (“Actual size”, not “Fit to page”). If your printer cannot print both sides, print page 1, put the sheet back in the paper tray printed side down (on most inkjets; try it on plain paper first and mark the top edge with a pencil), and print page 2. Duplex printers can shift the back by 1 to 2 mm, which is why all text on the card stays at least 6 mm inside its edge. For the card PDF, page 1 is the front and page 2 the back, at the card’s own size.

What paper should I print recipe cards on?

Matte card stock of about 200 to 250 g/m² (65 to 90 lb cover) feels like a real recipe card and survives a kitchen. Most home inkjet and laser printers take up to about 250 g/m² through the rear or manual feed; check the printer’s limit before buying 300 g/m². Cards that will be used next to the cooker last longer in clear 4×6 or A6 sleeves or laminated, and both inkjet and laser print can be written on afterwards with a ballpoint, not with gel ink.

Which characters can the cards print?

The cards use the PDF standard fonts (Helvetica, Times and Courier), which cover English and the Western European languages: é, ü, ø, ß, °, × and the fractions ½, ¼ and ¾ print as typed. Other fractions are written out (⅓ becomes 1/3), and letters outside that set, such as Greek, Cyrillic or emoji, are left out with a message under the card, never silently.

Is the recipe card maker free?

Yes: free, with no sign-up and no watermark. The recipe is kept only in this browser’s local storage so it is still there tomorrow; Clear deletes it. Need to halve a recipe or turn cups into grams before you print it? The recipe scaler does that, and its result can be pasted straight into the box above. For a week of meals and a shopping list, use the meal planner; for labels on jars of jam or biscuits you give away, the jar label maker.