Why we cook every recipe ourselves first

It has probably happened to you: you find a recipe with a beautiful photo, follow the instructions to the letter, and the result is something else entirely. The dough is too runny, the cake sinks, the sauce is too salty. Not because you can't cook, but because the recipe was never properly tested – or the photo doesn't even show the dish the recipe produces.

So at Receptarna we decided on a simple rule: Every recipe we publish, we have cooked, tested and photographed ourselves.

A recipe is a promise

When someone buys the ingredients, switches on the oven and sets aside an hour or two for lunch or a Sunday bake, they are trusting us. At that moment a recipe is a promise that the effort will pay off. We can't make that promise for a recipe we haven't made ourselves.

What happens when we actually cook a recipe

When we write a recipe down and then make it exactly as written, we almost always change something:

• quantities we used to add "by eye" get weighed and written down;
• a step that seemed obvious gets explained in more detail;
• the baking time is adjusted to the real one, not the ideal one;
• we add a tip on how to tell when the dish is done.

With our potato bread, for example, we baked several loaves, weighing every ingredient, before we were happy with the recipe. Details like these are the difference between a recipe that "sort of works" and one that works every time.

Why the photos are ours

A photo in a recipe isn't decoration, it's information. It shows how thick the dough should be, how well browned the crust, how big a piece. If we used someone else's photo or a stock photo, we would be showing you something you might never get from our recipe. That's why every photo on Receptarna was taken in our kitchen while the dish was being made from the published recipe.

The "Tested at Receptarna" label

With every recipe you'll find a label showing the month and year it was last tested. When we cook a recipe again and improve it, we update the date too. That way you know the recipe isn't old and forgotten.

And if it still doesn't work for you?

Kitchens differ: flour from different mills absorbs different amounts of water, and ovens bake with different strength. If a recipe doesn't work for you, write to us. Every message helps us improve the recipe further – and that is exactly what Receptarna is for.

Related

• How we test recipes