A family sugar cookie recipe past down from generation to generation. These fluffy sugar cookies make for the perfect holiday treat - soft, fluffy, and not overly sweet. Making a whopping several dozen cookies, this recipe is great for an afternoon activity with family or friends. (Bonus points if you're using dinosaur cookie cutters.)
Recipe Source: Joanna Sasim (aka Grandma)
note: the instructions as written (unaltered), however I will rewrite them to be more detailed/approachable
Source: Soft Sugar Cookies - The Toasty Kitchen
Source: Soft Sugar Cookies - The Toasty Kitchen
Source: Super Soft Sugar Cookies - Tastes Better From Scratch
Source: Super Soft Sugar Cookies - Tastes Better From Scratch
Source: Softest Fluffiest Vanilla Sugar Cookies - Rodelle Kitchen
Food.com - The best part of this site is how it incorporates its images. Instead of a long stream of individual images that keeps you scrolling for ages (like I've done on this page), it presents the images in a little gallery where you can click on the next picture. A small feature I also enjoy: there is a button to convert units to metric/US. Specifically looking at this beef and broccoli recipe
Taste of Home - For many of the recipes on this site, it gets straight into the recipe without much preamble. I found this site a strong reference for its layout. Some sites give the ingredients and then the directions underneath, but this site has the ingredients and directions side-by-side, which is such a small thing but makes a noticeable improvement. One annoying part: the little banner of more recipes remains at the top of your screen as you scroll, which takes up too much space on your screen.
Tastes Better from Scratch - This site doesn't have the blog preamble, although it does start with a more detailed/in depth “how to make” instructions. I think it's useful to have more detailed instructions, hence this is a good reference, but maybe it can come after the full recipe. A couple small details I like: checkboxes next to the ingredients, list of equipment needed, recipe visually represented as a sort of recipe card (different color background), batch size feature.
AIGA Eye on Design - There are a few small features of this site I really enjoy. Visually, I'm a fan of color used sparingly, and this site does that well. The brand pink is sprinkled throughout for a variety of information, not too much, not too little, but it draws your attention. I also really enjoy the small detail of the side buttons. 1. They're a bit unordinary in their placement (and I like finding ways to break the mold) and 2. The text wiggles when you hover over it.
Oliver Jeffers - This is the website for an illustrator I like, so of course it is bursting with personality. In short: the interactions on this page are fun. Scrolling down to see how the text floats up with the images, or when it changes color makes you want to keep scrolling. Stylistically, I'm fond of the hand-lettered type he uses on the website (which he also uses in his works). It makes the website feel more human and less like a machine, which seems fitting since I am doing a beloved family recipe for this project.
mandomike - This site I've included mostly for its gentle visual language. It features text that is not black, and boxed information. It's fairly standard, but what I like most is that it comes across and modern and clean without being bubbly - I'm finding that I don't like rounded edges as much, even though that seems a common design feature nowadays. Clicking on the different tabs is also a fun interaction in the way the text changes. Even though a recipe site won't have a whole lot of interaction going on, I like discovering ways to make simple interactions fun.