Hey, I’m Jacqueline 👋
Thanks for your interest in my site!
Crafty Cookbook is a collection of thoroughly tested recipes and in-depth cooking guides designed to help home cooks build confidence in the kitchen.
Whether you’re preparing a quick Tuesday night dinner or tackling your first homemade sushi roll, I hope these recipes not only show you what to do, but help you understand why they work so you can continue growing as a cook.
It All Started with Sushi
After becoming fascinated (obsessed?) with making sushi at home, I struggled to find the kind of detailed, approachable resource I wished existed. When I started sharing photos of my homemade sushi online, I was bombarded with questions from people who wanted to learn too. I wanted to point them to a guide that answered everything they needed to know, but that didn't exist. That gap ultimately inspired me to create Crafty Cookbook in 2022, starting with my Homemade Sushi Beginner's Guide.
Today, Crafty Cookbook has grown to host thousands of daily visitors and offers one of the most comprehensive guides to homemade sushi available for free online. You can find images from this site among the top image results for "sushi" on Google, which feels quite surreal!
While sushi was the foundation, the site quickly expanded beyond Japanese cuisine to include all of the meals I love to make at home. Today you’ll find everything from quick weeknight dinners to project recipes like barbecue and homemade pizza that reward a little extra time and attention.
Every recipe is guided by the same question:
Is the final result worth the time, effort, and ingredient cost?
Sometimes that philosophy means embracing convenience. If frozen udon noodles, packaged curry roux, or another shortcut delivers nearly identical results, I’ll happily recommend it. Other times, I’ll encourage spending the better part of a day making homemade pizza dough if the difference is genuinely worth it. My goal isn’t to make everything from scratch; it’s to help you spend your time where it matters most.
Some recipes come together after only a few rounds of testing, while others take months, or even years, to refine. My Detroit-style pizza recipe, for example, went through more than a dozen iterations over the course of a year before I settled on a recipe that consistently produced the texture and flavor I was looking for.
Getting Personal
I'm Jacqueline Schell, and every recipe on Crafty Cookbook is developed and photographed by me in my home kitchen in Southern California. To me, cooking feels like making edible craft projects, which inspired the name Crafty Cookbook.
By profession, I'm an aerospace engineer specializing in rocket propulsion. Outside of work, I'm endlessly curious about food and constantly chasing my next memorable meal. I have a simple goal: eat one great meal every day. To make that possible, I develop recipes that span a wide range of effort and complexity, from quick weeknight dinners to ambitious weekend projects.
My background as an engineer strongly influences how I approach recipe development. I enjoy understanding why recipes work, comparing techniques, eliminating unnecessary steps, and writing detailed, easy-to-follow instructions. Rather than simply following tradition, I want to understand which parts of a recipe make a meaningful difference and which can be simplified without sacrificing quality. You could say I love to optimize.
Travel is a major source of inspiration for Crafty Cookbook. Many recipes here trace their roots to memorable meals I’ve enjoyed while traveling, both through the U.S. and abroad to places like Japan, Italy, and France. I intentionally plan trips around food, researching restaurants months in advance, taking cooking classes with local instructors, and seeking out small family-run establishments. Those experiences often return home with me as new ideas to explore, refine, and eventually share here.
Preparing an early batch of homemade sushi (before launching Crafty Cookbook). 
Attending a cheese-making class in Paris, France. 
Attending a pasta class in Florence, Italy. 
Attending a home cooking class in Okinawa, Japan 
Attending a Neapolitan pizza class in Napoli, Italy. 
Attending a croissant class in Paris, France. 
Attending a soy sauce pressing class at a traditional soy sauce brewery in Asuka, Nara, Japan. 
Viewing the traditional aging tanks at a soy sauce brewery in Asuka, Nara, Japan.
A Few More Ingredients
- In addition to food, I really enjoy learning about wine and sake. I hold the Introductory Sommelier certification through the Court of Master Sommeliers, and I am working towards the title of Certified Sommelier.
- I serve as a moderator for the r/sushi and r/japanesefood communities on Reddit, where I enjoy discussing ingredients, equipment, and techniques with other passionate home cooks.
- I love learning new things, and lately I’ve been channeling that into studying Japanese. これが読めたら、クラフティ·クックブックへようこそ！
- Behind the scenes, my husband Nathan is my biggest supporter and helps to make all of this possible! He’s the taste tester, dishwasher, hand model, and 100 other unglamorous jobs that keep the recipes coming.
Contact
You can reach out to me at [email protected] or via direct message to @CraftyCookbook on Instagram.
Thanks for your curiosity, and I hope Crafty Cookbook helps you discover a new favorite recipe, master a technique you’ve always wanted to learn, or simply enjoy spending a little more time in the kitchen.
Beyond the Recipes
In addition to recipes, you'll find a few small side-quests on the site.
The Caring Kitchens program is focused on donating a portion of our advertising revenue to charities fighting hunger and food insecurity. You can learn more by heading over to the Caring Kitchens page!
I also have a page dedicated to my antique cookbook collection, including links to pdfs of antique cookbooks that are in the public domain, which you can view for free online.
Art on the site
You may notice sushi artwork throughout the site. These illustrations were commissioned for Crafty Cookbook through Fiverr in 2022 and are not AI-generated. When I launched the site, I had already finalized around 50 sushi recipes but didn't have standalone photos of every roll. I'm gradually re-photographing those recipes and replacing the artwork with original images. There are no AI-generated images on Crafty Cookbook.