New/Additional Content
- Physical imagery as progress through recipe, sequential guidance (need to create)
- Time to prepare, cook, freeze
- Serving size
Website Ideas
- Group crucial info at top at a glance, e.g. prep time, serving size; maybe quick scaling estimate for diff serving sizes
- People will have to frequently refer back to instructions; try to avoid too much scrolling so lots of content at a glance
- Group crucial info at top at a glance, e.g. prep time, serving size; maybe quick scaling estimate for diff serving sizes
- People will have to frequently refer back to instructions; try to avoid too much scrolling so lots of content at a glance
Recipe Content
Lavender Ice Cream Cake
A whimsical, luxurious dessert to inspire both palate and mind. Combine the best of both worlds with ice cream cake, infused with the delicate aroma of lavender.
Cook-time & Servings
Ice Cream/Custard Prep: 45 min (preheat oven now)
Prepare & Cook Pie Crust: 30 min
Freeze Ice Cream: according to ice cream maker, 20-45 min
Spread Ice Cream & Freeze Cake: 4+ hours
Total: 6 hours
8 servings
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 3/4 cup whole milk
- 1/3 cup lavender honey
- 1/4 cup + 1 heaping tblsp granulated sugar
- 2 tsp dried lavender
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 4 large egg yolks
- 9 honey graham crackers
- 5 tblsp unsalted butter, melted
- (optional) purple coarse sugar for topping
- nonstick cooking spray
Instructions
-
Make the ice cream: Heat the heavy cream, milk, honey, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, the lavender and a pinch of salt in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until hot but not boiling, about 5 minutes.
-
Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl; slowly drizzle in 1 cup of the hot cream mixture, whisking constantly. Gradually stir the hot egg mixture into the saucepan with the remaining cream mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the custard is slightly thickened and coats the back of the spoon, about 8 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl; discard the lavender. Fill a large bowl halfway with ice water. Carefully place the bowl of custard in the ice water and let sit, stirring the custard occasionally and adding more ice to the water as needed, until the custard is cold, about 30 minutes.
-
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Generously coat a 9-inch pie plate with cooking spray. Pulse the graham crackers, the remaining 1 heaping tablespoon granulated sugar and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a food processor until finely ground. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the melted butter. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom and up the side of the prepared pie plate. Bake until lightly browned and set, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a rack; let cool completely.
-
Freeze the custard in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions, until it's the consistency of soft-serve. Spread in the cooled crust and sprinkle coarse sugar around the edge. Freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.
- Enjoy ;)
Sample Imagery
Recipe Websites
Supercook.com
Supercook offers recipes based off what ingredients their users have or would like to use. In response, Supercook formats their site after a virtual grocery list. This user-centered approach considers how people might cook in real life, working from what they have available and offering good functionality as a result.
NYTimes Cooking
The NYTimes cooking main page offers recipes organized by a wide range of needs, from an attention-grabbing headline image with their current favorite recipe to editors' favorites below. Their recipe page itself benefits from minimalism - mostly black on white text and avoiding more than two columns of information at a time, the recipe is very clear. The ingredients listed alongside the steps also make them very easy to reference.
My Recipes
My Recipes' most unique feature is the ability to cross off ingredients as you work through them. This is a simple yet effective way for users to organize and interact with the recipe as they work through it.
Non-Recipe Websites
Origami Way
While I don't think this site has a particularly interesting design, I do like their right-aligned navigation bar featuring organized groups of commonly-used patterns. Maybe in my own site I can click on a side nav bar to jump to different parts of the recipe. I also like the side-by-side images and text, which make sense for the visual medium of origami and may also make sense for baking.
Yarnspirations
I like how the Yarnspirations crochet patterns are able to maximize their horizontal layout to fit their pattern on the screen. It is easy to look at at a glance, which crocheting often requires and would also apply to baking or cooking - maximizing information on a page can be very helpful if you need to otherwise constantly scroll back and forth to reference ingredients, previous steps, etc. in a recipe.
Apartments.com
I've noticed several websites make an effort to group their most critical information at the top of the page; Apartments.com does this as well, including info like rent, bedrooms and bathrooms, etc. at the very top under images of the apartment. I think a recipe page could also benefit from this treatment, providing the key information first and then getting into more details later once people are sold on the feasability and their enjoyment of the recipe.