Is it OK to share recipes from cookbooks on your blog?

I was in a discussion the other day regarding this topic and I thought I would take the discussion to my blog and see what other readers think for I couldn’t exactly see my friend’s reasoning. You see, my friend was baffled when I posted a picture of a luscious chocolate cake I made from a recipe book and when she asked me to photocopy the recipe from the book, I refused because I was breaching the intellectual rights of the book author. She thought I was being a pest and didn’t want anyone to “make the cake” and that’s why I was such a bad person and a bad friend and “who would know?”.

I, however, stood my ground and began thinking about my decision for a moment. It is there, on the inside flap of the book and every book for that matter. No part of this book is to be photocopied etc. Up till now, I’ve tried my absolute best not to share something from a book, especially cookbooks. I have hundreds, if not thousands of recipes from numerous cookbooks lying around the house but never before had I thought of posting someone else’s recipe in full and I am now wondering if I’m the only stuck up person in this day and age who does that? Is it OK to share recipes from cookbooks on your blog? And by sharing I mean letting the internet know that this recipe is from so and so book by so and so chef and following afterwards with your own steps and pictures?

I’m not sure I have an answer for that question, and I myself I’m currently scoring other foodie blogs and trying to see how it is working out for them but until I get a decent answer then no, my dear friend, you cannot have a photocopy of the recipe but you are more than welcome to borrow my book and do as you please with it. Anyways, the recipe in question was that of a gooey, fudgy, luscious chocolate cake that is so moist it almost melted away as it arrived on your lips. I did add the frosting from a can, I was too knackered that day to bake a cake and prepare frosting and clean the kitchen afterwards so I took a short cut and that slice of cake, with that ice-cold cup of fresh milk and cup of bubbling hot tea, was the blissful comfort food that I was longing for but didn’t know I was, if that makes any sense at all?

And while we are on the subject, let me tell you about my first attempt at making cake pops. You must have come across cake pops in this day and age, no? Made popular by Bakerella’s blog, I’ve always thought to myself they looked easy to me. Just mix a cake with some frosting, then ball them up and dunk into some melted chocolate to cover. How hard can that be?

Apparently, very hard, bordering on impossible! The bloody cake/frosting balls were too sticky and when dunked in the chocolate they didn’t cooperate and when I took them out of the melted pool of chocolate splashing everywhere and put them on baking paper to cool and firm up they looked nothing like cake pops. If there were a frankenstein myth in the cake pops world, my cake pops would be it.  -btw both the new frankenstein and Dracula movies were banned in Kuwait, apparently mythical creatures are dangerous now so excuse me if I’ve mentioned frankenstein at all in my post-

Anyways after a lot of online browsing and numerous youtube video watching, I thought I’ve finally figured out what went wrong in my chocolate dunking “technique” and decided to give it another go with the leftover cake pops. I have to say that this time around my cake pops turned out much more appetising and less of a freak but those weren’t easy to make and I personally do not have the patience necessary to dunk sticky cake and frosting mush into liquid chocolate. I’ve hung my cake pop making apron and call it a day, for good.

Now what do you think? Would you share recipes from cookbooks with people you know? Would you give a person who wouldn’t share a recipe with you a hard time? Its not that I do not want to share the recipe in the first place -which some people actually do btw-, I’m just trying to be a law-abiding-citzen so why am I painted as the bad guy here? What do you think?