Creating Your Cookbook
Turn your favorite recipes into a beautiful, printed cookbook — whether it's a family collection passed down for generations, a gift for someone special, or your own recipe box brought to life. This guide walks you through the whole process, from your first blank page to a printed book on your doorstep.
Top 5 questions people ask
Can I add a dedication page to my cookbook?
Yes — click "Add" → "Add a dedication" in the editor. It adds $1.00 to your book's price. (See Step 5: Design your cover & add a dedication below.)
Is there a limit to the amount of recipes I can add?
There's no fixed cap in the editor, but cookbooks top out around 380 pages — roughly 90–160 recipes depending on length. (See how recipe count affects price in Ordering & Pricing.)
Is there a way to add sections into the book?
Yes — click "Add" → "Add a section" to group your recipes (e.g. "Appetizers," "Desserts"). (See Step 3: Organize your cookbook below.)
How do we collaborate on this app so the whole family can be involved?
The web editor currently supports one owner per cookbook — contributors can send their recipes to the owner to add in. (See Sharing & viewing cookbooks below.)
Can I add multiple recipes at once?
Not yet — recipes are added one at a time from "Add" → "Add a recipe." (See Step 2: Add your recipes below.)
What you'll need
- A Vinst account (you'll be asked to sign in before your cookbook is saved)
- Your recipes — typed out, pasted from a website, or just photos of handwritten cards (see Adding a Recipe to Your Recipe Box if you haven't saved any yet)
- About 15–20 minutes to get your first draft going (you can always come back and finish later)
💰 Wondering what a printed cookbook costs before you dive in? Check our Ordering & Pricing guide — it covers pricing, page/recipe limits, and shipping so you can plan around your budget from the start.
📱 Using Vinst on your phone? Everything below works the same way — you'll just find the menu behind the ☰ icon instead of a sidebar, and pop-ups open as full screens instead of small centered windows.
The basics, at a glance
- Start your cookbook — give it a name and pick a cover
- Add your recipes — one at a time, in whatever format is easiest for you
- Organize — reorder recipes and group them into sections
- Personalize — fine-tune recipe photos, your cover, and an optional dedication
- Preview — flip through your book exactly as it will print
Step 1: Start your cookbook
Click "Start a new cookbook" — you'll find this button on your My Cookbooks page, or inside the editor if you're already working on one.
📱 On mobile: this button lives in a bar fixed to the bottom of your My Cookbooks page (it's at the top on desktop), and as you name your book and pick a cover, Back/Next stay pinned to the bottom of the screen too.
Name your book
Enter a title and author name. Keep the two combined under 60 characters — this keeps the printed spine clean and readable. Don't worry about getting it perfect now; you can change both later from your cover settings.
Choose your cover
Pick a language for your book, then either:
- Choose one of Vinst's default cover designs, or
- Upload your own photo (JPG, PNG, or WEBP, up to 10 MB)
📌 For the sharpest print, use a cover image at least 2700×3600 px (300 DPI). If your photo is much smaller, you'll see a heads-up warning before you continue — you can still use it, but it may look a little soft in print.
Click through and your cookbook is created — you'll land straight in the editor, ready to start adding recipes.
Step 2: Add your recipes
Inside your cookbook editor, click "Add" → "Add a recipe". You'll choose from five ways to add a recipe:
| Type | Best for |
|---|---|
| Text recipe | Typing or pasting a recipe straight from a document, email, or note |
| Image recipe | A photo of a handwritten card, a cookbook page, or a screenshot |
| URL recipe | A link to a recipe from a blog or website — Vinst fetches and formats it for you |
| From Recipe Box | Any recipe you've already saved in your Recipe Box |
| Blank recipe | Starting completely from scratch |
For text, image, and URL recipes, Vinst automatically generates a matching photo for you using AI — you can turn this off with a checkbox if you'd rather add your own photo later. (These four recipe types work the same way as adding directly to your Recipe Box — see Adding a Recipe to Your Recipe Box for the full field-by-field walkthrough of each.)
Each recipe needs at minimum a title, at least one ingredient, and one instruction step before it can be saved (blank and text recipes) — image and URL recipes handle this for you automatically once the content is processed.
💡 Tip: Recipes are added one at a time — there's currently no bulk upload. If a recipe doesn't finish saving right away, give it a moment to process, then refresh the page.
💡 Got a PDF? Direct PDF upload isn't supported yet. Either copy/paste the text into a Text recipe, or take a screenshot of the page and add it as an Image recipe.
📱 On mobile: this opens as a full-screen sheet you can swipe through instead of a small popup, with the five recipe types stacked in a single column.
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On desktop: |
On mobile: |
Step 3: Organize your cookbook
Open "Edit Interior" to see every recipe in your book. From here you can:
- Reorder recipes — press and drag the handle next to any recipe to move it. You can sort by dish type (salads, desserts...), alphabetically, or however makes sense for your book.
- Group recipes into sections — click "Add" → "Add a section", give it a title (e.g. "Appetizers," "Grandma's Desserts"), and drag recipes underneath it.
- Rename or delete a section at any time — deleting a section doesn't delete its recipes, they just become unsectioned again.
- Remove a recipe from the book using the trash icon next to it — this only removes it from this cookbook, not from your Recipe Box.
💡 If a reordered recipe jumps back to its old spot, save your change, then refresh the page — your edit is usually saved even if the screen hasn't caught up yet.
📱 On mobile: tap a recipe (instead of hovering over it) to bring up a menu for changing its photo or editing its details — dragging to reorder works the same way with your finger.
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On desktop: |
On mobile: |
Tapping a recipe on mobile opens this chooser:
Step 4: Edit your recipes
From Edit Interior, click into any recipe to adjust its details or photo.
Editing recipe details: update the title, ingredients, instructions, servings, time, or notes, then click Update. Since recipes live in your Recipe Box and are just referenced by your cookbook, this update applies everywhere that recipe appears — including its Food Story page.
Changing a recipe photo: click the image icon on any recipe to:
- Upload your own photo (JPG/PNG/WEBP, up to 10 MB)
- Generate a new AI photo (up to 3 generations per recipe)
- Choose Fit or Fill to control how the image is framed
📌 Best print quality: aim for images sized 2100×3000 px. Anything much smaller will trigger a low-resolution warning — you can still use it, but expect some softness in print.
💡 Each recipe supports one photo in the printed book.
Step 5: Design your cover & add a dedication
Update your cover anytime from "Edit Book's Cover" — change the title, author, language, or image, or check "Hide text from cover and only show the cover image" if you'd rather let your photo speak for itself. (Your title and author will still appear on the spine either way.)
Add a dedication — a personal note at the very front of your book — by clicking "Add" → "Add a dedication." Give it an optional title (up to 100 characters) and your message (up to 1000 characters).
📌 A dedication adds $1.00 to your book's final price.
Step 6: Preview your cookbook
As you work, a live preview sits in the center of your editor, starting from the front cover — every change you make (recipes, sections, images) shows up here right away. Flip through using the arrows on either side to check every page before you print.
Happy with how it looks? Head over to Ordering & Pricing to get your cookbook printed.
Sharing & viewing cookbooks
- Your own cookbooks always open in the editor for full editing.
- Cookbooks someone else created open in view-only mode — you can look through them, but only the owner can make changes.
- Right now, there's no way to duplicate a cookbook on the web. If you'd like to reuse recipes across two books, add them individually to each one from your Recipe Box.
- Building a cookbook together as a family? The web editor currently supports one owner per cookbook. The easiest way to combine everyone's recipes: have contributors send their recipes to whoever owns the cookbook (text, email, WhatsApp — whatever's easiest), and the owner adds them in.
📱 On mobile: if you're prompted to switch to the Vinst app to keep editing a collaborative cookbook, you'll see a button to open the app directly — the QR code shown on desktop is skipped, since scanning a code on the phone you're already holding wouldn't help.
💡 Want a lighter-weight way to group recipes together first — without committing to a full print layout? See Collections, which can be turned into a cookbook whenever you're ready.
More questions
Can I translate a recipe?
Yes — open any recipe, click the language button in the top bar, and choose the language you'd like it translated into.
Where can I find the cookbooks I'm working on?
Head to My Cookbooks any time. From the editor, you can also click "Go to My Cookbooks" in the top-left corner.
I removed a recipe from my cookbook — is it gone for good?
No — it's still saved in your Recipe Box, on the web and in the Vinst mobile app (removing it from a cookbook only removes the reference, never the recipe itself).
My recipe isn't saving or updating.
Double-check the required fields are filled in (title, at least one ingredient, one instruction step), click Update, then refresh the page. If it's still not sticking, try signing out and back in. Still stuck? Email info@vinst.me with a screenshot and we'll take a look.
Questions we couldn't answer here? Reach out to the Vinst team at info@vinst.me — we're happy to help.