Plymouth Woman Creates Cookbooks to Preserve Family Recipes
Rachel Ingber of Plymouth launched Heirloom Collaborative in 2021
Rachel Ingber has a passion for photography.
“I always like making things look their very best when possible,” Ingber said during a recent photo shoot at her Plymouth home.
Her subject for this photo shoot is a plate of cookies decorated with sprinkles, placed against a backdrop that makes the finished product look like something out of a magazine.
“I always like adding something that’s fresh in it as well,” Ingber said. “Whether it’s a fresh herb or flowers or something like that. That kind of brings a little bit of life to it as well.”
These days, she’s been doing quite a bit of food photography.
In 2021, she launched a business called “Heirloom Collaborative,” which specializes in making custom family cookbooks.
“I just have so much joy of helping people create these memories and share them with their families,” Ingber said.
Cookies photographed by Rachel Ingber during a recent photo shoot for Heirloom Collaborative.
Passing recipes on from one generation to another
So far, she’s made about a dozen cookbooks filled with special family recipes — alongside her high quality photos — that customers can then pass on from one generation to the next.
“For folks that are local, I give them the option, either they can be the ones that do actually the cooking and the baking, and I’ll just go over and photograph them,” Ingber said. “We’ll have these photo sessions or cooking and baking parties. Or I can be the one to take all of that on”
The idea came several years ago when Ingber decided that she wanted to preserve the recipes of her husband’s 97-year-old grandmother, who was an avid cook and baker.
After a lot of hard work, Ingber presented the cookbook to her on her 100th birthday.
“She ended up passing away six months later,” Ingber said. “And it has been so wonderful for our family to be able to make her chocolate chip cookies and have her face on the cover of that book.”
It’s the sort of joy that she wants to share with others, and she’ll go through the painstaking work to ensure that her clients’ curated recipes can be presented in a way that makes everyone proud.
“It makes me so happy,” she said. “If money was no object, I would do this for free because I just think it is so fun to do.”
The price of a cookbook begins at $1,400.
Rachel Ingber photographs cookies inside her Plymouth home for Heirloom Collaborative.
