10 Recipe Sharing Dos and Don’ts

10 Recipe Sharing Dos and Don’ts

These are my 10 Recipe Sharing Dos and Don’ts. Please feel free to add yours!

There is a reason I tend to made the same recipes over and over and over again from my trusty recipe box; they have the correct ingredients and I can understand the directions!! All too often lately when I go searching the internet for a recipe, I find the directions suspect, the ingredients called into question, and I wonder if that photograph is actually of the recipe listed below it!

● Make certain you have used enough of an ingredient. Guess what? If I decide to make a recipe with real whipping cream, I know there are calories in the recipe. Listing less of a fattening ingredient doesn’t make the recipe “healthy” or “skinny” or “low cal”. It just makes the recipe suck. Unless you are using some crazy form of math (cue the common core jokes), no way in hell do 12 Oreo cookies cover the bottom of a 13″x9″ pan. Make sure you list the correct quantity of an ingredient. Please.

● Three ounces of cream cheese should be outlawed as an ingredient. I’m sorry, but I have yet to see a recipe where 3 ounces of cream cheese is enough to cover anything except a stalk of celery – and I don’t even like cream cheese!

● List ALL the ingredients. Yeah, yeah, we all forget sometimes. But I’m looking at YOU – the one that leaves off an ingredient on EVERY.STINKING.RECIPE. You know who you are, now quit it or I am gonna start following you around on pinterest and comment on all your pins to that effect. And right now, I am feeling crabby enough to just do it.

● If something needs to be stirred continually to prevent scorching or burning, state that. Otherwise some people (like me) will let it bubble up and ruin whatever was in that pot on the stove.

● No, the microwave does not replace the oven or range top. ‘Nuff said.

● For the love of Pete, re-read your freaking instructions to make sure they make sense. I don’t care how often you have made that pixie-sweet-mango-juice, I never have!! I need to know the little things, like the correct combination order, when something needs to be chilled, that tamping down with a fork is necessary so the batter doesn’t stick to your fingers. I can’t tell you how many recipes I have completely rewritten because the directions were just plain screwy.

● Parchment paper and wax paper are not interchangeable. Period. If it goes into the oven, it needs to be parchment paper.

● Tips are appreciated. No, not monetary ones (although …. ), but tips, tricks and twists to make a recipe just a tad different. Will peanut butter work instead of cashew butter? Will greasing the aluminum foil help? The mini food processor will crush well, but be careful to not make it too fine. Etc., etc… It’s the little things that can improve a recipe. If you know of any extra tidbits to make a recipe better/different, don’t be afraid to share them!

● I don’t need a picture unless the recipe is extremely complex, but many people do. Try and make the photograph clear (not always possible, I know), and label that photograph if you aren’t listing clear instructions below each recipe step. This one I tend to not care much about, but there are others that are nutty about food pr0n and will really take you to task if the picture isn’t staged, 50mm, and taken in daylight.

● For goodness sake you are sharing a recipe. If you have right click disabled for copy and paste on your blog, get a freaking recipe plugin so I can print it, because I sure as heck know I am not planning on typing out that recipe from your blog. Not even for a recipe on how to make Godiva-quality-milk-chocolate in 5 minutes or less. Ok I lie, for THAT recipe, I would type it up. Regardless, allow me to print the recipe from your website without hoops – your choices are allow copy and paste, or a printable recipe plugin. Got it? Good.

What are your Recipe Sharing Dos and Don’ts?

● For a list of all recipes available on Ann’s Entitled Life, click here.