Small Acorns is a recipe journal that focuses on vegetarian cuisine, inspired by seasonal fruits and vegetables. Available for Windows PC and Phone, the app is the creation of the husband and wife duo at Amur Mobile who realized they had amassed a healthy collection of vegetarian recipes and decided to share their collection by creating Small Acorns.
The app is simply laid out with a host of vegetarian recipes that can be filtered by season or special dietary needs (dairy free, gluten free or vegan). In scanning through the recipes, even if you aren't a devoted vegetarian, you should find a few tasty recipes worth trying.
Small Acorns could use a little polishing, but overall, it is an appealing cooking title to have tucked away in your Windows 10 library.
Small Acorns greets you with four main pages that are spread out in panoramic fashion. Control buttons line the bottom of the main pages where you can search for a recipe by keyword, launch a very basic cooking timer app and view the About page.
The main pages include:
- Latest: This page will highlight the latest recipes to make it to the app
- Recipes: A full listing of Small Acorns recipes
- Seasonal Recipes: These recipes are based on the seasonal availability of key fruits and vegetables
- Dietary Recipes: This page offers recipes for those with special dietary needs beyond the core vegetarian group such as dietary free
At the bottom of both the Seasonal and Dietary pages, you have a static tile that will filter recipes by each season or dietary need. You can sideswipe through recipe listings for Autumn, Summer, Winter, Spring and Yearly seasons. Button navigation is available for Gluten Free, Diary Free and Vegan recipes.
Recipe listings will include pages to summarize the dish, list the ingredients, list the cooking instructions, display photos of the dish and list any related recipes. Individual recipes can be pinned to your Start Screen for easy access and you will have control buttons to launch the timer app, launch the search tool and return to the main pages lining the bottom of the recipe pages.
You will also find short notes with recipes where the developers add tips and alternative ingredients for the recipes. The notes help add a personal touch to each dish.
The timer app is a very basic but functional kitchen timer. Just set the time and hit the play button and the countdown timer will start. The only supports a single timer and it would have been nice to have seen multiple timers available. It's not a deal breaker but would help with the app's appeal.
The home button is a fantastic touch and makes it simple to get back to Small Acorn's main pages fast. One quick note with regards to the search tool is that it supports voice to text entry. That is if you are busy stirring a pot and only have one hand free you can tap the microphone next to the search field and tell the app what to search for. Again, a very handy feature.
Small Acorns has dozens of vegetarian based recipes that cover everything from desserts to appetizers to entrees. While the library of recipes is respectable, I would have liked to have more filter options such as listing recipes by type or key ingredient.
As is, Small Acorns is an appealing cooking app. Even if you enjoy a hamburger with all the fixin's from time to time, you should be able to find several tasty recipes to try your hand with (the Dorset Apple Cake looks good!). The app ran stable from the Lumia 950 and a variety of Windows 10 PC devices. While the free app could use a little polishing, it is an attractive offering from an independent developer wanting to share his and his wife's collection of vegetarian recipes.
Download Small Acorns for Windows PC and Phone
