Food for thought: Shooglebox users open up their recipe boxes

Shooglebox is a great place to squirrel away and explore all the recipes and food ideas you come across on social media and web sites or when you're browsing cookbooks and magazines or chatting to friends and family.

Like most people, you will probably have recipes and ideas for things to cook scattered in lots of different places - in cookbooks and magazines, on sites you've bookmarked, social media posts, notes and photos on your phone, videos you've saved and handwritten scraps of paper.

Shooglebox helps give you a single visual view of all the things you've got scattered elsewhere – whether you're looking for inspiration for something to cook tonight or just want to remember that technique you only use once or twice a year.

It's handy for collecting:

• Links to favourite website recipes

• Inspiration from Instagram and other social media

• Family favourites and handwritten recipes

• Photos of magazine clippings or cookbook pages

• Videos of cooking tips and techniques on YouTube or TikTok

• Photos of meals you've enjoyed and want to recreate at home

As with any card on Shooglebox, you can customise the front of your recipe cards to make them nice and visual and add your own notes to the back – so you can keep reminders about what worked well last time or tips about ingredients and timings.

Shooglebox is a handy place to keep all your favourite recipes together - whether they're on paper or online - so they're a ready source of inspiration when someone asks "What's for tea?" or when you fancy cooking something a bit different.

With the Shooglebox app for Apple and Android devices it's quick and easy to grab and save photos of treasured handwritten recipes and cuttings or snap pictures of a meal you're enjoying and want to remember. A phone or tablet is also a handy way of referring to a favourite recipe as you cook in the kitchen.

We've been talking to some Shooglebox users about the different ways they collect and share recipes.

Ian and his dad use Shooglebox to share recipes and swap tips between them. Ian says: "My dad's a really good cook so I'll keep recipes in there that my dad's adapted. He'll add his own variations and alternatives for things and notes about what he's found that works better...

"I've got cards in there about how to cook stuff too – like beef sirloin. When I need it I can never find it in the cookbook although I can picture it on the shelf. If I add a photo to Shooglebox I always know where it is.

"Pancakes are another good example. We've got a family recipe for pancakes that's a particularly good recipe, but I can never remember the exact measurements because I don't make them often. So I've got a card in Shooglebox just for the quantities for pancakes.

"As well as the box I share with my dad, I've got a separate box of my own on Shooglebox for recipes and food ideas where I'll include nice things to eat. For example, I've got a menu in there from the local Thai takeaway, and restaurants I've been to or would like to try. I've also got the instructions for how to use the big green egg oven."

Here are some of the things other people told us:

"I was first inspired to make one of these cakes after seeing them on the Great British Bake-Off (series 6). The signature challenge in the first episode that year was for the contestants to make a Madeira cake and I thought it'd be fun to have a go at my own. I found a basic recipe on the BBC Good Food website and decided to make it more interesting by adding my own icing and spun sugar decorations. I keep photos of my bakes and my tweaked recipes in Shooglebox."

"We used this recipe loads during lockdown – the cookies only take 12 minutes to make so it was much quicker and easier than going to the supermarket to buy biscuits if we didn't have any in. The original recipe from my Mum had cocoa powder in it but we used Nutella instead. My kids make this a lot – I added the recipe to Shooglebox so they don't have to keep asking me for the ingredients and quantities!"

"I was left this curry and rice recipe by a Japanese student we hosted when I was in high school. She stayed with my family for a couple of weeks to learn and improve her English. One night she offered to cook a traditional Japanese Yamamoto family favourite for my family. We all loved the simple but scrumptious curry so much that we asked her to leave a recipe. We kept this recipe on the notice board in the utility room as we love how neat Mana's handwriting is, especially as she is not used to our alphabetic symbols (Mana uses the Hiragana Japanese alphabet). This piece of paper is the only place we have the recipe so we saved it into Shooglebox so that we never lose it."

"My friend Elaine shared a photo on WhatsApp of an apple and cinnamon cake she'd made. It was a group chat and people asked for the recipe - then had a discussion about the best place to buy Spelt flour. I knew I'd lose the information on WhatsApp so I added everything to a card in Shooglebox."

"I pulled together a box of easy-to-make recipes for my son Alex to try in his first year living away from home at uni – though luckily his housemates are keen cooks so he hasn't had to try too hard so far."

"My grandma's recipe – honestly the best Sticky Toffee Pudding EVER! It's getting a bit worn from use now so it's handy to have a copy I can pull; up on my iPad."

"I came across the recipe as my sister is vegan and she was missing baking and simple treats like a frosted cupcake. I can never remember which website the recipe is from so Shooglebox is great for storing this type of thing! You have to trust the process with these cupcakes. The first time she made them I was so intrigued... white vinegar in a cupcake?! The batter tastes disgusting before it is cooked so I was so shocked when the end result was a perfect, tasty vegan cupcake. Once it came out of the oven you would have never known that the recipe was made up of olive oil and white vinegar! I have made these many times and I just love them. The batter is really runny but it rises perfectly so don't be fooled into over filling your cupcake cases!"