Filling in a card on screen
- Type the recipe name and, if you know them, the servings and the prep and cook times. Anything you skip prints as a short line for a pen.
- Put each ingredient on its own line, with the amount first: "2 cups flour" reads faster at the counter than "flour, 2 cups". Bullets you paste in are removed, because every ingredient gets a small tick box.
- Write one step per line. The card numbers the steps, so leave out your own numbers; if you paste a list that has them, they are taken off.
- Use Notes for swaps, a serving idea or where the recipe comes from, and add a name under From the kitchen of when the card is a gift.
- Check the preview. The line under it tells you when the recipe runs onto a second card.
Printing on card stock
Recipe cards get handled with wet and floury fingers, so thicker paper is worth it. Before you load card stock, look up the heaviest paper your printer accepts in its manual or settings, and use the manual or rear feed if it has one. In the print dialog, choose the paper size of the sheet in the tray, set scaling to 100 % or Actual size, and pick a heavy paper setting if the dialog offers it.
Print the first sheet on plain paper to check the layout and the text size without using up the thicker sheets, and give the ink a minute to dry before you cut.
Cutting along the crop marks
The short lines in the margin are crop marks. Each pair marks one edge of a card, and the marks stop just short of the card, so no line shows on the finished card. The marks for the long sides sit in the left and right margins, the marks for the short sides at the top and bottom of the sheet.
Every cut takes away a margin, and with it some of the marks, so work in this order:
- Draw the two short sides in light pencil first, each from the mark at the top of the sheet to the matching mark at the bottom.
- Cut the long sides from mark to mark: a metal ruler and a craft knife on a cutting mat, or the blade of a paper trimmer lined up with both marks.
- Finish with the short sides, cutting on the pencil lines.
On a sheet of 5x7 cards on Letter paper the two cards touch, so the cut in the middle trims both at once. On all other sheets a half-inch strip between the cards falls away. Scissors work as well, as long as you cut on a drawn line.
When a recipe needs two cards
Long recipes continue on a second card printed on the same sheet. It repeats the recipe name, says continued at the top and carries on with the ingredients and steps where the first card stopped. Keep the pair together with a glue stick back to back, a staple in the top corner, or a clear sleeve that holds both. If you would rather have one card, try the 5x7 size or the full page before you shorten anything.
Organizing a recipe box
Sort the cards behind a few broad dividers and add a new one only when a section gets crowded. Cards you use every week can live at the front of their section.
| Divider | What goes behind it |
|---|---|
| Breakfast | Pancakes, egg dishes, granola, muffins |
| Soups and salads | Weeknight soups, dressings, grain salads |
| Mains | Split further by meat, fish and vegetarian once the section is full |
| Sides | Vegetables, rice, potatoes, breads |
| Baking and desserts | Cakes, cookies, pies, holiday baking |
| To try | New recipes, until you know they are keepers |
Pick a box or binder made for the card size you print, since a 5x7 card does not fit a box for 4x6 cards. Clear sleeves keep splashes off the cards you cook from most. Keep a few blank cards at the back, so a recipe you get from a friend goes straight into the box.
Tools for your recipes
Before you copy a recipe onto a card, the recipe scaler changes every amount to the number of servings you cook for. If the original lists cups and you bake by weight, cups to grams converts flour, sugar, butter and other common ingredients. The oven temperature converter switches between Celsius, Fahrenheit and gas marks, so the card can show the setting your oven uses. To decide which cards to cook from this week, the weekly meal planner gives you a grid for seven days and a grocery list.
Frequently asked questions
Is the recipe card template free?
Yes. Print as many cards as you like for your own recipe box, a family cookbook or a gift. You do not need an account or an email address, and the cards carry no watermark. One small line with our web address sits at the foot of the sheet.
Will the 4x6 and 5x7 cards come out at the right size?
Yes, when you print at 100 % or Actual size. The cards are drawn 6 by 4 inches (432 by 288 points) and 7 by 5 inches (504 by 360 points) on the sheet, and any scaling option in the print dialog changes those sizes. Measure the first card with a ruler before you print a whole stack.
What happens when my recipe does not fit on one card?
The rest moves to a second card on the same sheet. It repeats the recipe name with the word continued, and the ingredients and steps pick up where the first card stopped. A recipe that is too long even for two cards is cut at the end, and a note under the fields tells you so. A larger card size or shorter steps fix that; the full page has the most room.
How many cards fit on one sheet?
Two, for both card sizes on Letter and on A4. They lie on their long side, one above the other, with the crop marks in the margin around them. The 5x7 cards on Letter touch, so a single cut separates them; in every other case there is a gap of half an inch between the two cards. When you type in a recipe, the sheet holds that card and, if needed, its continuation card.
Should I pick lined or plain?
Lined puts a writing line under every row and a tick box in front of every ingredient row, which keeps handwriting straight and gives you spare rows for additions. Plain leaves the lines out for a cleaner card. Blank plain cards keep the tick boxes in the ingredients column, so you still have a guide for the list.
Why are some characters missing from my recipe?
The PDF uses a standard font that covers English and most Western European letters. It cannot draw emoji or other scripts such as Greek, Cyrillic or Chinese, so those are dropped, and a few rare accented letters lose their accent. A note under the fields appears when this happens, and the preview shows the text as it will print.