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It wasn't clear to me, from the UI, that I should be selecting the path to the solution file, rather than to the project. When I selected the solution file, the recipe proceeded to create a couple of problematic actions - "Subversion does not support the "Apply Label" operation.
I think you're right - I'd be better served building up my deployments from scratch, rather than trying to use the recipes. The recipes seem to make assumptions that don't always fit, and it's easier to build your own than to figure out what they are doing that isn't working.