Accessible App Overview: COOKIE Voice Recipes Ep 54

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Blind Life Podcast

Host: Sam Seavey
Episode: Accessible App Overview: COOKIE Voice Recipes (Ep 54)
Date: June 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Sam Seavey explores COOKIE, an accessible voice-controlled recipe application designed with the visually impaired community in mind. Sam offers a hands-on demonstration of the app, highlighting its voice-powered search and interaction features, accessibility considerations, pricing, and overall user experience on iOS.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to COOKIE – The Voice Recipe App

• Purpose:
  Sam introduces COOKIE as a voice recipe application, noting its suitability for blind and visually impaired users.
  • "You can search for recipes with your voice and then AI... will read the recipes back to you step by step and you can ask questions, get specific information." (Sam, 00:17)
• Platform:
  Currently only available on iOS. Sam couldn’t find it on Android and encourages listeners to contact the developer if interested. (A, 00:50)

2. Navigating the App – Main Sections

Sam describes the accessibility of the interface, enabled by VoiceOver:

• Home Tab:
  • Search for recipes using voice or text.
  • Offers pre-made suggestions.
    (A & B, 01:04)
• My Recipes Tab:
  • History of previously searched or saved recipes.
  • Adding personal recipes is a premium feature.
  • Example: “Best Ever Soft Peanut Butter Cookies” in history. (A & B, 01:28)
• More Tab:
  • Account management, subscription info, and support options.
  • Shows current usage (e.g., number of free trial recipes left). (A & B, 01:45)

3. Premium Features & Pricing

Sam reviews subscription options and the value proposition:

• Premium Benefits:
  • Unlimited AI recipe interactions.
  • Import your own recipes.
  • Enhanced voice quality and tech support.
• Pricing:
  • Annual: $2.50/month (billed $29.99/year)
  • Monthly: $3.99/month
  • "If you love to cook, if you love to bake, not too bad of a deal for what you get." (A, 02:38)

4. Demonstration – Using COOKIE to Make Banana Bread

a. Recipe Search and Selection

• Sam searches “banana bread” using the voice functionality—ten results appear. (A & B, 03:19)
• Each recipe can be saved as a favorite or opened directly.
• Sam chooses a recipe from AllRecipes.com.

b. Streamlined Recipe Display

• On opening, COOKIE extracts the recipe from the original website and presents it in a clean, accessible interface.
• High contrast text, pinch-to-zoom enabled, and ingredient checklists.
• Sam appreciates avoiding clutter and ads:
  • “I hate trying to search through a web page to find the recipe. It’s always at the bottom… a bunch of ads… So to be able to pull it all out… easy to understand format, that’s great right there.” (A, 04:56)

c. Voice Interaction and Hands-free Cooking

• A large microphone button lets users invoke COOKIE and ask detailed questions at any stage:

  • "Cookie, what are the ingredients?" (A, 05:45)
  • The app reads aloud: "2 cups all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda..." (B, 05:47)
  • "Cookie, how much butter do I need?"
    • “You need 1/2 cup butter." (A & B, 06:30)
  • "Cookie, what's the first step in the instructions?"
    • Step-by-step guidance, including oven temp and pan prep. (A & B, 06:34)

• You can navigate through recipe instructions and ingredients by saying "next," and ask for clarification at any moment.

• Sam highlights the convenience:

  • “This is all hands free, which is fantastic... have the phone just sitting on the counter... you just have to speak out loud to get the information.” (A, 07:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | 00:17 | “You can search for recipes with your voice and then AI... will read the recipes back to you step by step and you can ask questions, get specific information.” | Sam | | 02:38 | “If you love to cook, if you love to bake, not too bad of a deal for what you get.” | Sam | | 04:56 | “I hate trying to search through a web page to find the recipe. It’s always at the bottom… a bunch of ads… So to be able to pull it all out… easy to understand format, that’s great right there.” | Sam | | 07:11 | “This is all hands free, which is fantastic... you just have to speak out loud to get the information. I think this is fantastic.” | Sam |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00–01:13]: Introduction and app setup
• [01:13–02:38]: App navigation & premium feature overview
• [02:38–04:00]: Subscription pricing discussion
• [04:00–05:33]: Searching and selecting a recipe
• [05:33–07:15]: Demonstrating hands-free, voice-led cooking

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Conclusion

• COOKIE makes finding and cooking recipes significantly more accessible for blind and visually impaired users through voice search, AI-driven guidance, and a streamlined interface.
• The subscription pricing is reasonable given the rich, hands-free features.
• The app is currently iOS only, with a call to action for potential Android users.
• Sam highly recommends COOKIE for accessible cooking, especially due to its convenient voice-led, step-by-step instructions.

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For more information or to download COOKIE, check the links in the episode description.

Transcript

[A]

Hey guys, it's Sam with the Blind life. Welcome back. In today's accessible App Overview episode, we are looking at a really interesting application that I think a lot of people are going to like. It's simply called Cookie and it's a voice recipe application. You can search for recipes with your voice and then AI pretty sure it's AI will read the recipes back to you step by step and you can ask questions, get specific information. So so let's jump in and take a look. I'm going to turn on Voiceover so you can hear what the different options are. I have the app running on my iPhone. I did look for this app on the Google Play store for Android and did not see it. So this may be just an iOS only application at this time. I'll put links in the video description down below. Maybe you could reach out to the developer and encourage them to bring this to Android as well. When you launch the app, you're on the home page and here you can search for recipes. It also gives you some suggestions on what to search for.

[B]

Try searching for Search for Flourless Chocolate Cake Search for Vegan Lasagna button.

[A]

We'll come back to the search here, but at the bottom we have our

[B]

Tabs Tab bar selected Home tab My Recipes tab 2 of 3 your second tab is Recipes My Recipes My Recipes heading Sort Recipes button Lemon Cookies button

[A]

and these are recipes that you've recently searched for.

[B]

Best Ever Soft Peanut Butter Cookies button.

[A]

Apparently all my searches are yeah, you can add your own recipes, but that is a premium feature. We'll talk about that next.

[B]

Tab bar selected more tab 3 of

[A]

3 the final tab is More Selected

[B]

More tab More heading and this more

[A]

section is mostly about your account.

[B]

Free trial.

[A]

You see that I am currently using

[B]

the Free trial one AI recipes remaining

[A]

and I only have one AI recipe remaining and I'm going to use that to demonstrate for you guys. You're welcome.

[B]

Try the AI Cooking Assistant in one More Recipes upgrade for unlimited access. Upgrade to Premium button and let's see

[A]

how much it would be to upgrade

[B]

to Premium Expanded Cookie. Unlock the AI Cooking Assistant and get instant answers to any cooking question. A I Cooking Assistant Ask any question while cooking substitutions Techniques Troubleshoot Premium Voice Quality Ultra Import your own recipes Address Support World Central Kitchen Cookie Premium Manual 1 Year Subscription Recommended Option Save 37% $2.50 per month Billed as $29.99 per year Button Cookie Premium Monthly 1 Month Subscription $3.99 per month Restore purchases so

[A]

you can do an annual Subscription or a monthly subscription. As usual, if you go the annual route, it is a little bit cheaper per month. For the annual, you're looking at $2.50 a month, which isn't bad at all. It's less than $30 a year. If you decided to do monthly, you're looking at $3.99 a month, which once again, if you love to cook, if you love to bake, not too bad of a deal really for what you get. And speaking of that, let's take a look at it. All right, let's quickly search for a recipe. Let's see what should we cook today? Let's do banana bread Banana bread Inserted

[B]

banana bread Search recipes button.

[A]

All right, let's search close button.

[B]

Found 10 results. First result moist banana bread recipe Moist banana bread recipe video natashaskitchen.com from natashaskitchen.com

[A]

Button okay, so 10 recipes were found. It automatically jumped to the first one here. I can click on this to view the recipe. I can also swipe Add moist banana

[B]

bread recipe video natashaskitchen.com button I can

[A]

add this to my favorite recipes if I want.

[B]

Banana bread recipe with video from Simple Add banana Banana Banana bread recipe with video allrecipes from allrecipes.com button everybody has a video.

[A]

Okay, let's go with this. I'm going to double tap on it and it brings up the website. I'm going to turn off voiceover here just to make it a little bit easier to scroll. Brings up the website for the recipe. So I could go through here and I could look at this. I can zoom in, pinch to zoom to look at this and just follow the recipe traditionally. But at the very top we have a very large button that says cookie this recipe. So that's what I want to click on to get the AI involved here. And now it's pulled out that recipe and put it into a much easier to understand format. Here we have the ingredients. At the top there's a little spot for a check mark next to it. So as I gather my ingredients, I could check them off, which could be very helpful. Down below we have the instructions. So just right there alone is great. I don't know about you guys, but I hate trying to search through a web page to find the recipe. It's always at the bottom. There's a bunch of ads and everything. It's kind of a pain. So to be able to pull it all out and put it in a nice high contrast, easy to understand format, that's great right there. But the real power is being able to talk to the app and get that information read out loud to you. At the very bottom we have a microphone and it says say C O O K I E. Cancel.

[B]

How can I help?

[A]

She even spelled she knew her name by spelling it. That's crazy. Okay, well, this is where we can get the information. So I say cookie. What are the ingredients?

[B]

Here are the 2 cups all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, a quarter teaspoon salt say next for more.

[A]

Next.

[B]

3/4 cup brown sugar a half cup butter 2 eggs beaten say next for more.

[A]

And of course we've got our upgrade button just popped up because this is my last recipe. But now I can go. I could continue to say next and get the next information or I can. Anytime I want to ask a question, I can just say the keyword and then ask the question. Cookie. How much butter do I need?

[B]

You need 1/2 cup butter cookie.

[A]

What's the first step in the instructions?

[B]

Step one. Gather all ingredients. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 175 degrees Celsius. Lightly grease a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan.

[A]

And so this is great. You can go back and if you missed a couple of the ingredients, you could ask if you wanted to jump ahead and just say something like cookie. How long do I need to bake these for?

[B]

60 minutes. Step four, bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 60 minutes.

[A]

And this is all hands free, which is fantastic. So you could have the phone just sitting on the counter while you're gathering all your stuff and you just have to speak out loud to get the information. I think this is fantastic. And like I said, for $2.50 a month and have unlimited access to AI recipes by voice, I don't know, sounds kind of worth it to me. All right, if you are an iOS user and you would like information about this app, I will leave that in the video description down below. Once again, if you are Android, maybe you can reach out to the developer and encourage them to bring it to Android. But that's it for me, guys. Thank you so much as always. This is Sam with the Blind Life. I will see you next time.