Head on over to the Cooking Forum with your question, some of the forum members there have made their own cookbooks. It's also a wonderful place to spend time after your kitchen is done, great forum friends and recipes.

I have not done it, but I know a couple of friends who have done it.

The only thing is, if they are your own recipes, making them reproducible for people who are not there right beside you is harder than you think!

Your "pinch", if you measure it, could be 2 tablespoons. You may start with a cup of flour, but if you actually go by texture, it might end up being a little more. Colorado cooks? Your lowland friends may need to adjust.

Maybe write it out, then have a friend who is not a cook and not familiar with it try the recipe, and see where they have trouble.

(This is why there are "test kitchens". They make a recipe as stated, then see how the results are. If they believe home cooks will have to massage the results too much, the recipe is usually dropped.)

Assembling tested recipes, whether from other books, or grandma's that you know the adjustments (say it takes less baking time, more sugar, you like twice as much jalapeno) is a good start.

These can be great gifts, mementoes of special events, bridal gifts, reunions etc. Even, say, a barbecue cookbook for guys with photos of them for groomsmen.

Blurb.com makes a great book. Their system is fairly intuitive for making the book. Just be sure to order their heavier paper.

I had a friend do a book on his travels on his Mac. I don't know what program he used but it turned out SUPER. He gave it as a gift to his sister. Was hard bound and very handsome.

It sounds like a great idea that you'll enjoy for a long time to come, and could give to others as gifts. I've kept my recipes in a binder with protector covers over each page, and I've loved seeing the handwriting from the individuals that shared the recipes with me. It is so easy to find what I'm looking for, and they never get ruined. - I used to keep them in an index card box and that was a nightmare. About 1 in 50 recipes ever came to me on an index card, so the rest were folded scraps of paper.

If you enjoy crafts, you can bind your own book. It's lots of fun, though getting the boards can be tricky.

I keep my recipes in my computer and update them as I use them, or have bits to add to share them with others. I never thought of making a bound book out of them. My first cookbook when I was a little girl was looseleaf, though, so maybe I don't appreciate the binding enough.

Binding books is a blast, though. :) Good luck with your project.

I made a cookbook of family recipes for my daughter's engagement. It has the recipes from all branches of our families and often related pictures. For instance, her birthday fell on Thanksgiving when she was 4, and she thought the whole celebration was for her birthday. The pumpkin pie recipe has a picture of her blowing out the candle on the pumpkin pie. My grandmother, who passed away at 100 many years ago now, made date bars that we love, and her picture at an age where my daughter remembers her is on that page.

One caution: careful as I was, there are mistakes here and there. For instance, there is a recipe left out of the indexing and a couple of recipes have minor errors that are a problem. I did all the layout on my computer, so it is easy for me to go back and fix the mistakes. Because I had all the pages bound at Kinkos with a comb binding (recommended binding regardless of where it is done) and a clear face cover, it is relatively easy to go back and correct. To reprint a whole bound book might be overly expensive. Alternative: "test run" the book in paper format before printing.

One of my cousins did such a piece for her closest family, using some website. My mother was thrilled to be included under "Aunt X's Apple Bread" even if she had no need for an actual copy of the book at age 87.

I second the suggestion that you test every recipe. Twice. Otherwise, you will be known as the person who ruined somebody else's precious recipe for apple bread forever.

I just got a program called "Living Cookbook 2011" from my dd for Christmas. I was able to download a free copy from their website and use it for free for 30 days before she even spent the money. After a week, I was sold.

It has a few built-in recipes, but I bought it for the build-your-own-cookbook feature. Then you can divide it into your own chapters. I've input a few pies and soups. I took pictures of my piecrusts, apple, pumpkin, and pecan pies from Thanksgiving dinner and was able to put them in the cookbook. There is also room for additional pictures and I have pictures of my nieces helping me roll out the pie crusts.

My kids call me for recipes and my old favorites are in the recipe box, loose papers, my Betty Crocker & Better Homes & Gardens, Women's Day Encyclopedia of Cooking and a dozen other church cookbooks, microwave cookbooks. If I wasn't around, they were lost.

So I've put it on my laptop and will be able to take it with me on vacation (Yes, we like to cook on vacation.) and eventually be able to print out copies of it. It also automatically calculates the nutritional values of the recipes once you put in the serving number.

It has a lot of bells and whistles like meal planning and making a grocery list, but it doesn't have apps for you to go to the grocery store with. You can search by ingredient.

But of course, my ultimate goal is to print copies of it out.

As our kids moved out, they were always calling home for recipes. So a few years ago we made them all a cookbook for Christmas- Big hit! We included jokes and sayings with each. Like "cut olives into four equal slices" (family joke if you are helping dad make his famous scarpiella); "serve with mom's burned rolls". We also put little blurbs about why the recipe is special to us as a family. This was several years ago, and it was fairly easy to do. We just had them bound at kinkos.
Last month granddaughter called from college and asked for a cookbook. That warmed my heart! of course it was in the mail the next day! I put her favorite dessert on the cover. She named this Yummy Yummy Cake years ago.