Saffron
A bright, joyful Ghost theme for food blogs and recipe newsletters, with a smart recipe card.
// overview
About Saffron
Saffron is a bright, joyful theme for food blogs and recipe newsletters. Its smart recipe card is built from plain editor content, so readers can tick off ingredients, scale servings and keep the screen awake while they cook, with no recipe plugin.
Who it is for
- You publish recipes or a food newsletter
- You want readers to cook from your site, not just read it
- You like bright, warm, friendly design
- You sell members-only recipes or plan to
Probably not for you if
- You need structured recipe data from a plugin (Saffron reads plain content)
- You want a quiet, minimal look — see Folio or Noir
- Your site is mostly news or long essays — see Ledger
Pages and layouts
Page templates: Recipe index, Cooks, Membership, Signin, Signup, Account.
Getting set up
- Tags: give each tag (Weeknight, Baking…) a square feature image and a colour. They become the round craving buttons and colour the tag pages.
- Featured recipes: mark 4–8 posts as Featured for the Crowd favourites row.
- Upload the theme zip in Ghost Admin → Settings → Design, then fill in the theme settings.
- Import the sample content if you want to start from the demo and replace it with your own posts.
What you download
- The theme, ready for Ghost 6.0 or later (saffron_1.0.0)
- Documentation in HTML and PDF
- Sample content you can import into Ghost
- 12 months of updates and support from the people who built it
Requirements
A Ghost 6 site: Ghost(Pro) on a plan that allows custom themes, or self-hosted Ghost. Memberships and paid tiers use Ghost's own members feature and its Stripe connection; the theme adds the pages and the paywall design. Demo photos are not included in the download.
// features
What's included
- Smart recipe card built from plain editor content: no plugin and no special cards
- Tick-off ingredients and steps, remembered on each reader's device
- Servings scaler: + and − update every quantity, fractions included
- Cook mode keeps the screen awake while cooking
- 'Jump to recipe' and 'Print recipe' buttons; printing shows only the recipe
- Homepage hero with your newest recipe on a round plate and a spinning NEW RECIPE sticker
- Round 'What are you craving?' buttons for your tags
- Crowd favourites: a sideways-scrolling row of featured recipes
- Recipe index page from A to Z with a quick filter
- Cooks page and colourful tag and author pages
- Wavy newsletter band on every page
- Membership page with tiers and a monthly/yearly switch
- Styled paywall for members-only and paid recipes
- Sign in, sign up and account pages
- Light first, with dark and system modes and a reader toggle
- Reading progress bar and image lightbox
- Self-hosted fonts (Fraunces, DM Sans)
- Fully translatable, 18 theme settings, no jQuery
Compatibility & tags
Changelog
v1.0.0 · 2026-09-30
- First release.
// faq
Questions about Saffron
Read more about Saffron
Best Ghost Theme for a Food Blog in 2026: What a Recipe Site Really Needs
A recipe site is not a normal blog. Readers cook from it with flour on their hands. Here is what a Ghost theme for food bloggers has to do, and where Saffron fits.
Ghost vs WordPress in 2026: Which Should You Choose for Your Blog or Publication?
WordPress can do almost anything. Ghost does publishing, newsletters and memberships, and does them very well. Here is how to choose between them.
Best Ghost Theme for a Travel Blog in 2026: Maps, Photos and a Newsletter
Travel readers want to see where you went before they read how. Here is what a Ghost travel theme should do, and how Wander puts every story on a map.
You might also like
all_ghostcms
GhostA warm, editorial Ghost theme for independent magazines and newsletters, with three homepage layouts.
GhostA dark, terminal-inspired Ghost theme for developer blogs, with code blocks that highlight and copy, a command palette and post series.
GhostA bold, colourful neo-brutalist Ghost theme for creator newsletters, paid communities and personal brands.