Finding a Good Recipe

By Zoe Kim

I’m always looking for a great recipe and I have some fantastic ones which I have found by using a tried and true method. When looking for a recipe on the Internet, most of the pictures look amazing, but when making them yourself, they do not taste or look as good as the picture. To avoid that problem, I have a few tips on how to choose a great recipe.

Last week, I watched a video of a girl who made three different types of vegan chocolate chip cookies, testing them for their flavour and appearances. Primarily, the video judged the taste more than the look. After she made those three cookies and tried them, she praised one of the recipes as the “best chocolate chip cookie she’s ever tasted.” I decided to find out for myself by making that exact cookie.

When I make chocolate chip cookies, I use the same recipe every single time—Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. Our family loves this recipe, and so does everyone else who’ve had the opportune chance to try them! I was insatiably curious to see if “the best vegan chocolate chip cookies” would beat the cookies I know and love.

Welp. I made the cookies. Although they did not look like the cookies in the video because I did not use an ice cream scoop to shape them, the color looked similar. Unsurprisingly, the cookies did not taste the same as the Toll House recipe. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t very good either, and every cookie tasted slightly different (which my brother attested to, so it was not because of my taste buds) Obviously, something went wrong in my cookies—but what was it? We shall never know because those cookies aren’t worth the hassle.

But that’s not the point. The point is: looks can be deceiving and not just with recipes. This is how I find good recipes:

1. Know what you are looking for.
   • Sometimes I want to bake something, but I cannot pinpoint exactly what I want to make. As a result, I usually go on Pinterest and scroll for ideas of what I want to bake.
2. Look it up.
   • When I finally decide what I want to bake, I search it up on the Internet using keywords. For example: if I wanted to make a chocolate chip cookie, I would write whether I want it to be easy, healthy, or gluten-free. Those are some basic keywords. Instead of just searching “cookie,” be very specific. Example: “easy, gluten-free, healthy, no bake, double dark chocolate chip cookies without peanuts.”
3. Look at the source and reviews.
   • Items will pop up and you will want to click on the recipes which have the best and most reviews—five stars being the best and zero the worst.            When clicking on potential recipes, scroll to where the reviews and comments are (usually on the bottom), and they will often have questions, tips, and feedback on the final product
4. Ingredients.
   • Then, you make sure you have all the ingredients. Generally, if you are missing more than one ingredient, you should not use that recipe. If you’re missing one ingredient, then sometimes there are substitutes which will make the final product taste similar to the original recipe.
5. Make it!

Ta-da! There you go! After you’ve found your recipe, go ahead and make it!

(These tips apply to all recipes.)

Some websites I have found to be reliable:

www.allrecipes.com

www.yummly.com

Plus, there are many bloggers who post their own recipes. Make sure to look at the reviews which will tell a lot about the final product and give you general tips.