List

7 recipe blogs worth bookmarking (and what to cook from each first)

Seven independent recipe blogs run by the cooks who write them: weeknight seafood, bakery pavlova, slow cooker dinners and single-serve desserts. Pick one and start cooking.

By Lars Salling4 min read

A saved post tells you a dish exists. A good recipe blog tells you how big the pan is, why the butter has to be cold, and what to do when your sauce looks wrong. These seven recipe blogs are each run by the person who writes the recipes, and it shows in the details.

They're also nicely different. One will get you cooking seafood on a Tuesday, one teaches bakery desserts at home, and one is built for nights when you only want one muffin.

1. Weekday Pescatarian by Christina (@weekdaypescatarian)

Christina calls seafood "the final frontier" of most people's cooking, and she speaks from experience: she went from self-described meat-and-potatoes queen to eating seafood every week, and now writes from Portugal. Her blog has more than 400 tested recipes, built for cooks who'd like to buy fish but aren't sure what to do with it once it's home.

Start with the whole grilled branzino. A whole fish looks like a project, and her version takes about 20 minutes. Sardines appear twice below, in air fryer tacos and with grits and Cajun gravy, which is a good way to find out you like them.

2. Bonni Bakery by Jules Grasekamp (@bonni_bakery)

Jules ran her own bakery for ten years before starting Bonni Bakery in 2020, and the recipes were developed in that busy bakery kitchen. What sets her blog apart is the explaining: each recipe walks through the science behind the steps, so you know why the meringue needs what it needs.

The pavlova and the lemon meringue pie are the two to try if egg whites have ever beaten you. Her apple roses, baked in puff pastry, look like they came out of a patisserie window.

3. Boston Girl Bakes by Heather Farmer (@bostongirlbakes)

Heather taught Home Ec for seven years and has written three baking cookbooks, and you can tell. Her recipes teach you what the dough should look like and how to recognize a finished bake, instead of only giving you a timer to trust.

The chocolate zucchini bread is the easy entry point: no mixer, and a tip not to wring out the zucchini, because the moisture is what keeps the loaf soft. For something to show off, the peach raspberry tart starts with just two peaches.

4. Persnickety Plates by Melissa Williams (@melissa_pplates)

Melissa has been publishing Persnickety Plates from Metro Detroit since 2009, which she says makes her a blogging grandma. She's best known for slow cooker recipes, and she's firm that her recipes are developed, tested, photographed and written by a human: her.

Her porcupine meatballs cook their rice right in the slow cooker with the sauce. The queso blanco needs four ingredients and no Velveeta. And the pineapple angel food cake, made for her dad's birthday, is a box of cake mix and a can of crushed pineapple.

5. Mallory the Dietitian by Mallory Brown (@mallorythedietitian)

Mallory has been a registered dietitian for nearly fifteen years and started her blog in 2023, with a clear promise in her Instagram bio: "I do the recipe testing so you don't have to." Her recipes are balanced meals you'd want to eat anyway, with plenty built for meal prep.

The Greek chicken and rice bowls are made for packing into containers on Sunday. Peach cobbler overnight oats turns dessert into breakfast, and the spring roll in a bowl skips the rolling but keeps the peanut dressing.

6. Pumpkin 'N Spice by Gayle (@pumpkin_n_spice)

Gayle is a self-taught cook from the Chicago suburbs who learned by trial and error, and her blog leans into easy, low-stress cooking. Her single-serve desserts are the reason to bookmark it: one muffin, one small upside-down cake, no tray of leftovers tempting you all week.

If you've ever tried to scale a recipe down to one serving, you'll appreciate recipes written for one from the start. The air fryer apple crisp is the fall pick.

7. The Vegan Larder by Louise-Claire Cayzer (@louiseclaireskitchen)

Louise-Claire cooks seasonal plant-based food meant for everyone at the table, vegan or not. Many of her recipes are vegan versions of old favourites, including dishes from her childhood in Australia and recipes her Granny wrote down.

The Aussie zucchini slice is one of those, an Australian favourite made vegan. Her tofu halloumi is worth making just to see how close it gets, and the zucchini scarpaccia, an Italian tart, is a good use for a glut of zucchini.

Why a recipe blog is worth bookmarking

A post in your Instagram saves doesn't tell you much about a recipe. On a blog, the recipe has its own page: amounts, pan sizes, the step that usually goes wrong, and comments from people who already made it. When the author fixes something, the page is updated for everyone.

So bookmark the blog, not just the dish. Our guide to saving recipes so you can actually cook from them covers how to keep the ones you love. And if you publish recipes yourself, these seven are a good model for what a recipe website can be.

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