Creating Recipes

Recipes are where CostingBrik turns your ingredient data into actionable cost information. By building your recipes in Brikly, you get an accurate, real-time cost per portion that updates automatically whenever ingredient prices change.

Building a recipe from ingredients

To create a new recipe:

1. Navigate to CostingBrik > Recipes.
2. Click Add Recipe.
3. Enter a recipe name (e.g. "Sourdough Loaf 800g", "Caesar Salad", "Flat White").
4. Select a recipe category (see below).
5. Start adding ingredients.

Adding ingredients to a recipe

For each ingredient in the recipe:

1. Click Add Ingredient.
2. Search for the ingredient by name - Brikly will autocomplete from your ingredient library.
3. Enter the quantity in the ingredient's base unit (e.g. 0.5 kg of flour, 3 each of eggs, 200 ml of cream).
4. The cost for that line is calculated automatically from the current ingredient price.

Continue adding ingredients until the recipe is complete. The running total updates as you add each line.

Example - Victoria Sponge:

Ingredient	Quantity	Unit	Cost
Caster sugar	200	g	£0.18
Unsalted butter	200	g	£0.62
Free-range eggs	4	each	£1.12
Self-raising flour	200	g	£0.14
Vanilla extract	5	ml	£0.15
Strawberry jam	60	g	£0.22
Double cream	150	ml	£0.41
Total			£2.84

Setting quantities and yields

Yield

The yield tells Brikly how many portions or units a recipe makes. This is essential for calculating the cost per portion.

• A cake recipe might yield 12 slices.
• A soup recipe might yield 8 portions.
• A bread recipe might yield 2 loaves.
• A sauce recipe might yield 500 ml.

Cost per portion = Total recipe cost / Yield

Using the Victoria Sponge example above with a yield of 12 slices:

£2.84 / 12 = £0.24 per slice

Be realistic with yields

It is tempting to set generous yields, but this will make your costs look lower than they really are. Be honest about how many portions you actually get from a recipe in practice, not in theory.

Batch size

If you always make a recipe in a specific batch size, record that as your standard yield. This makes it easy to scale - if you need to make a double batch, you know the cost is simply 2x the recipe cost.

Wastage and prep loss

Not all of an ingredient ends up on the plate. CostingBrik lets you account for prep loss and wastage at the ingredient level within a recipe.

Common examples:

Ingredient	Gross quantity	Wastage %	Usable quantity	Reason
Carrots	500g	15%	425g	Peeling and trimming
Chicken breast	200g	5%	190g	Trimming fat and sinew
Herbs (fresh)	30g	40%	18g	Stems discarded
Prawns (shell-on)	300g	35%	195g	Shell and head removed

When you set a wastage percentage on a recipe line, Brikly increases the effective cost to account for the unusable portion:

Adjusted cost = Ingredient cost / (1 - wastage %)

So if 500g of carrots costs £0.40 and you have 15% wastage:

£0.40 / (1 - 0.15) = £0.40 / 0.85 = £0.47

This gives you a more accurate picture of what that ingredient actually costs you in the dish.

Recipe categories

Organise your recipes into categories for easy navigation and reporting:

• Starters
• Mains
• Desserts
• Sides
• Drinks
• Baked goods
• Prep / Sub-recipes
• Specials

You can create custom categories to suit your operation. A bakery might have "Bread", "Pastries", "Cakes", and "Savouries". A coffee shop might have "Hot Drinks", "Cold Drinks", "Food - Hot", and "Food - Cold".

Duplicating recipes

If you have a recipe that is similar to an existing one, you do not need to start from scratch:

1. Open the existing recipe.
2. Click Duplicate.
3. Give the new recipe a name.
4. Edit the ingredient quantities or swap ingredients as needed.

This is particularly useful for:

• Seasonal variations - duplicate your house salad and swap in seasonal produce.
• Size variants - duplicate a 400g sourdough loaf recipe and adjust for an 800g version.
• Dietary versions - duplicate a recipe and swap regular ingredients for gluten-free or plant-based alternatives.

Duplicates are independent

Once you duplicate a recipe, the copy is completely independent of the original. Changing one will not affect the other.