Muffins and Cupcakes
When you first open the application, visually it is quite sweet. It is very reflective of it's content, and uses a mixture of both illustration and digital image. From the home screen, this app seemed quite promising, however, it all went downhill from here.
When I ventured onto different features, the pop-ups and advertisements began, which was extremely annoying. It also took away from the overall aesthetics of the app. On the recipes page, despite the advertisement, you could scroll up and down to find quite a large number of muffin and cupcake recipes.
Once you clicked on your desired recipe, you were taken to the ingredients page, which you could flick back onto when needed using the tabs at the top. This page was kind of bland in comparison to the rest, however this is necessary as it needs to be readable.
The directions worked in the same way as the ingredients, by scrolling down to find simple and easy steps. I felt that this app didn't really have much to offer, and was pretty basic. There was nothing exciting or interesting about it, however, it's initial aesthetics were quite eye catching and kitsch.
Just Cake
This app functioned by tilting your phone on it's side so that you were given a full screen view. Inititally, although it seemed quite bland, the app was clean, simple and to the point. On the main page, all you had to do was swipe across to find a variety of different recipes. It wasn't until you clicked on a recipe that it got extremely weird.
For something that claims to make 'good food simple', this is the most overcomplicated way of presenting a recipe I have ever seen. All of the recipes were like this, and visually it was absolutely mental. Although different stages are numbered, everything is all over the place. There's no real separation of ingredients and stages, and the colours and 3D images make this app extremely tacky and unusable.
Allrecipes UK
The allrecipes app followed an orange and black colour scheme throughout, which straight away did not appeal to me. I found it quite dull and rather a strange colour chose for a recipe app.
The idea behind this app is that it is a 'recipe spinner'. You can either choose the categories yourself or all it choose for you. The categories include dish type, ingredients and time ready in. When the categories have been spun, it will tell you whether or not there have been any recipe matches. I decided to choose myself, and picked dessert, dairy and 60 minutes or less.
These are the results given from my chosen cateogry. The results are recipes that have been submitted by those who use the app or the website. Each recipe is then given a rating, time and serving amount. I feel that the 'spinning dinner' feature is rather strange, although different from anything I have seen before.
The recipes themselves are set out extremely simple, and feature the annoying adverts seen on previous apps. This isn't an app that I would personally use, as I feel that the colours really put me off. They do not reflect the content and I also feel that the spinning feature is unnecessary.
Betty Crocker Cookbook
The Betty Crocker Cookbook was extremely representative of the brand itself. Using the logo, and colour scheme throughout the entire app.
To begin with, the app gave me the option of logging in or signing up, which would all me to synch recipes and shopping lists across different devices if I had them. This would allow for inspiration on the go, and a way of organising recipes.
Once the last step was skipped, I was taken to the recipe page. The overall look of the app was extremely useable and easy to navigate. The search recipes tab allowed you to search for a particular recipe that you want to make, or it would surprise you. Another option, was for you to shake your phone, which would then take you to a random recipe. This was a nice little interactive feature.
The other option was to find a recipe by typing in ingredients that you already have available, and choosing what type of meal you want to make. This is extremely useful and it allows individuals to make the most of what they already have without having to go out and purchase loads of new ingredients.
I shook my phone for a surprise and ended up getting Beef Stew. The recipe itself was extremely easy to understand, and the white background meant that the recipe itself was readable.
The recipe itself was only made up of three simple steps, which made the recipe appear quick and easy to make.
Baking Helper
This app was simply something you would use alongside a recipe app. It displayed the information in usual iPhone style, and featured a units conversion and a cooking timer. Although not aesthetically pleasing, an app like this is evidently handy within a baking environment.
BIY Recipes
This app was by far the best app I came across, and I was genuinely quite surprised that it was available as a free download. The overall feel of the app was extremely professional and contemporary, making use of digital image and icons. It has a range of features, including recipes, videos, shopping list, news and also a social networking feature.
The recipes themselves allowed you to travel through different sections using tabs, and they took on the approach of using a ring bound notebook, which was an effective feature.
This section was easy to follow and simple to use, and it also offered the option of using a timer on certain steps that needed to be timed.
Baking Tray
When trying to open this application, I couldn't get passed the title screen. It simply just kept flashing at me.
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