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Make a PDF cookbook

A PDF cookbook turns a selection of your Forktastic recipes into a single, printable, shareable PDF. It’s the right format for:

  • Printing a personal cookbook to give as a gift
  • Sending a curated recipe collection to a relative who doesn’t use apps
  • Archiving a special-occasion collection (a wedding shower meal, holiday menu)

PDF cookbooks are a Pro feature. Single-recipe PDF export is available on the free tier — see Share a recipe.

The five steps

PDF Cookbook builder — step 1: Select Recipes.

Forktastic walks you through five steps:

  1. Select recipes and cookbooks
  2. Customize (book title, author, intro text)
  3. Choose a layout
  4. Choose a cover style
  5. Generate

Each step takes ~30 seconds. The whole thing is usually done in 3–5 minutes.

Step 1 — Select recipes and cookbooks

  1. Open the Cookbook tab → More → Make PDF cookbook.
  2. The selection screen opens with a list of all your cookbooks.
  3. Tap a cookbook to include all its recipes, or tap > to drill in and pick individual recipes.
  4. Use the search bar to find specific recipes from any cookbook.
  5. The header shows your running count (“23 recipes selected”). Tap Next.

Step 2 — Customize

PDF cookbook customize step

  • Book title — what the PDF is called (defaults to the cookbook name)
  • Author — defaults to your Forktastic display name; change to a different name (e.g., “From the kitchen of Mark & Helen”) if making a gift
  • Subtitle — optional, prints under the title
  • Intro text — optional one-page intro before the recipes (good for a dedication or note)

Tap Next.

Step 3 — Choose a layout

Three layout options affect how each recipe page is structured:

  • Compact — two recipes per page, smaller fonts. Good for reference cookbooks.
  • Standard — one recipe per page, balanced ingredients/instructions columns. Most popular.
  • Spacious — one recipe per page with photo, prep notes, and extra whitespace. Best for printing or gift-giving.

Tap a layout card to preview it. Tap Next.

Step 4 — Choose a cover style

Pick a visual style for the front cover:

  • Brand — Forktastic-branded cover with the wordmark
  • Photo — uses one of your recipe photos as the full-bleed cover
  • Minimal — text-only, clean typography
  • Vintage — illustrated border, classic cookbook aesthetic
  • Bold — large title, bright color
  • Blank — no design, just title and author (good if you’ll add a custom cover later)

Tap a style to preview the cover with your title and author already filled in. Tap Next.

Step 5 — Generate

  1. Forktastic builds the PDF — this takes 10–60 seconds depending on recipe count and whether your cookbook has many photos.
  2. When complete, you see a preview of the first few pages.
  3. Tap Save to Files to keep it locally, or Share to send it via the device share sheet (email, AirDrop, messaging app).

The PDF is yours to do whatever with — print at home, send to a print-on-demand service like Lulu or Blurb, email, save in cloud storage.

What the PDF includes

Each recipe page contains:

  • Title
  • Cover photo (if you have one)
  • Servings, prep time, cook time
  • Ingredients list (in your preferred units)
  • Step-by-step instructions
  • Source URL (if imported)

The PDF does not include:

  • Your personal notes (private to you)
  • Family ratings or reviews
  • Nutrition tables (toggle in settings if you want them — see below)

Optional toggles

Before generating, expand the Options section in step 2:

  • Include nutrition — adds a per-recipe nutrition panel
  • Include cookbook intro pages — if you selected entire cookbooks, each cookbook gets a divider page
  • Page size — Letter, A4, A5

Limits

PDF generation is unlimited on Pro. There’s no per-PDF cost; you can generate as many as you want.

The maximum number of recipes in a single PDF is 200. If you have more, generate multiple PDFs (e.g., one per cookbook) and combine them in a PDF tool of your choice.