People who have a passion for cooking or are interested in starting to cook for themselves at home more, this is the site for you! It is a great public recipe vault. It’s really made for the home cook. After all, not everyone has been to cooking school or raised by Martha Stewart or worked in a restaurant!
You the reader can post, rate and review recipes on this site. I love it because you can pick categories like Crock Pot, Vegetarian, Desserts or even Top 20 ever!
Also you can create a free login and save your favorite recipes in a virtual recipe box.
Here’s an example of how in 5 minutes time, you can have a really excellent recipe that has been tested and reviewed over and over and over.
The Test: Allrecipes.com No Bake Cookies III:
You can get a nice spread on the batter if you use a scoop, work quickly or they will crystallize
Click on the recipe link above. Here are my ingredients. Hershey's Special Dark makes these cookies really dark in color.
Here’s how I found the recipe, you can follow along and do these steps while reading:
– Go to http://www.allrecipes.com
– Type in “no bake cookies”
– 1,745 recipes popped up. Who has that kind of time?
– Click the Lavender colored “Sort By” field titled “Rating”
– The top rated recipes from the 1,745 will be sort best to least rating
– Notice in the first page of 5 stars (highest rating) none were called “No Bake”
– Click on next page and Boo-YAH! The first recipe titled “No Bake Cookies III” has 4.5 stars and 1,007 reviews. That means after 1,007 reviews the average rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. That’s pretty great! I would take that over one person saying that something is 5 stars.
– Click on the title “No Bake Cookies III”
– Just a quick stat: 21,823 users have saved this in their virtual recipe box–whoa!
– Read it through quickly, do you like the ingredients? Do your instincts tell you sounds about right? If good enough, Click on “Read Reviews”
– Now remember there were 1,007 reviews, with the most recent being at the top
– Click “Most Helpful” and VOILA, 5 star rating of a user’s comments and suggestions, precisely 835 users found this tip helpful
I read the tip and I would agree. The only tip I would add to you after just now making these “cookies” (they are really more like a candy similar to a quick fudge) is using a heavy bottomed pot, like an enamel coated cast-iron pot or your heaviest pot. This allows for the most even and hot rolling boil.
This is what a FULL rolling boil looks like. Exactly 1 minute like this and your cookies will have a terrific sheen to them.
The other tip is that they seem to lose their awesome sheen when refrigerated. So, just wrap up tightly and leave at room temp.
Now that you know what Allrecipes.com is all about, here are my thoughts:
Pros:
(1) You can change the number of servings and the computer will auto-calculate all the ingredients based on the final number of servings you want to make.
(2) You can quickly read the top rated reviews / edits on the original recipe
Cons:
(1) Sometimes the top rated recipes use ingredients that are highly processed, like Campbell’s Cream of anything soup
(2) If you find a great recipe once and don’t save it, it might be hard to locate later. You might want a Beef Vegetable soup recipe, but the original was called “granny’s sumthin’ meaty soup”. The tags aren’t great to get to this.
This post is dedicated to my dear friend, Becky. One time, she dropped off a plate of one of my favorite desserts, Lemon Bars. I tasted (later the whole plate-full) and texted “are these Allrecipe’s Bake Sale Lemon Bars?” Turns out I was right! She was a little shocked, but then not really at the same time. Everyone must have a friend like her! The type that would still bake for a skilled and semi-trained baker just because she wanted to. Love her!
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Thank you to Carrie M for adding me to her blogroll. I’m so honored. Carrie M and Becky would be great buds I’m sure of it. Both have a passion and talent for baking consistency for their families and friends. Keep it up ladies!
Bite Sized By Carrie 