Below I will list the supplies and steps on how to make a DIY Just Add Magic Cookbook.
I made these homemade DIY Just Add Magic Cookbooks and gave them out as favors for the guests of my daughter’s Just Add Magic Birthday Party.
They turned out really nice and my daughter’s friends were excited about them.
My friend told me that the day after the party her daughter asked to make the flap jack recipe and her daughter added a little magical sugar from the spice jar to the flap jacks. That made me so happy to hear!
During the party I had each girl write their names as the Trusted Keeper of their Just Add Magic Cookbook.
While this binder cookbook is obviously not authentic to the show, it is easy and inexpensive to make.
If you have seen the Just add Magic Cookbook you’ll know its leather so there is quite a bit of difference in quality… as well as price.
The leather cookbook I bought off Etsy was over $60.00… the binder cookbooks only cost me about $5.00 each to make.
I ordered this this darling leather bound book off of Etsy for my daughter’s birthday present.
I’d recommend if you buy from this seller to select the option for the fewest recipes to come with the book as possible—reasons why are that she made up a bunch of the recipes she includes with the book.
Many of the seller’s own recipes are not very elaborate or well thought out. The riddles she makes up aren’t what I would term a riddle. Many are just a sentence about the food itself.
Also, this seller omits a lot of the most important recipes from the show. I counted at least 20 main recipes from the show that were missing despite ordering “all 70” from her.
Once you get the 70 recipes, you find that they are little pieces of paper (plain, small, and really don’t have that much character), plus you have to glue them in yourself—which is just a lot of work for the price of each recipe.
Overall, I’d give this Etsy seller a 5 star on the leather bound book but 2 stars for the recipes included.
I wanted to use the recipes as favors, so if I used this seller’s recipes I would’ve had to transcribe or scan each to print with a dark background by ordering from that seller.
Since I was disappointed in the recipes and I wanted to be able to give them out as party favors (for my personal use), I ordered the Just Add Magic recipes in PDF/Word document off of Etsy from this different seller.
I was very pleased to get this as a PDF and word document. I was able to remove the background color in Word so I could print it on the aged paper that I ordered here.
I also was able to edit some of the recipes and add Chameleon Cauliflower and another few recipes to the book.
This download contained almost all of the authentic recipes from the show that I could think of, including the Last Ditch Layer Cake (tutorial on how I simplified the recipe here).
Many of them had a lot of additional characters to them, plus the download included a page with Rose’s face and areas where you can add photos of your own.
Since it was a word doc, I could add a few of the recipes I found were missing (Sight seeing Carrot Sticks, Chameloeon Cauliflower) which was awesome.
Since it is a word document you can edit, replace, or add to it—which I loved!
The only issue with using the word document was that I had to search for and download the free fonts. This took me about 20 minutes and I’ll list all of the fonts below.
A few of the fonts I couldn’t find for free, so I just replaced them with fonts of my own. Some of my favorite fonts from Dafont.com. DJB fonts are a particular favorite of mine. IMPORTANT…if you use some of your own fonts you’ll need to make sure the page numbers are still congruent.
So before I printed, I just looked at each recipe and made sure that the font was cute/interesting and that the page numbers were still accurate.
These are the fonts you’ll need in order to get the same look as the PDF version…
In order to make cookbooks and spice jars that were affordable for the Just Add Magic Birthday Party, I purchased and did the following.
Supply List for a DIY Just Add Magic Cookbook
1″ burgundy binders $1.65 each purchasing 13
plastic sheet protectors I used 42 per book (printing double sided)
Gold vinyl. 12×180 was more than enough (probably twice as much as I needed) to make 13 binders and 15 spice box decals with some left over. I thought I was buying the shimmer but I got the matte. I would have preferred the shimmer vinyl.
Printer that can print double sided and toner
Word document from this Etsy seller
Cricut cutout/SVG File- I plan to sell my SVG file I made for ~$1.50 on Etsy but until I get that set up, just email me [email protected] and my VA will send it to you. Title the email Just Add Magic SVG file.
How to Assemble a DIY Just Add Magic Cookbook
1- Order the pdf/word doc of the book from aforementioned Etsy Seller
2- If you have Microsoft word, Download the fonts shown above and restart the computer so that they show up in Word.
3- Download the book into Microsoft word. Remove the background color by clicking on Design then Page color and then selecting no color.
4- Edit the document as you wish. Double check that the recipes are still on the correct pages before printing.
5- Load printer with aged paper and select double sided option (google your printer name+ model number + the words “how to print double sided” if you do not know how to do this).
6- Select Black (very important that you do not try to print in color or it will take forever to print).
7- Select high quality
8- Print the book
9- Add ~42 plastic page protectors to the maroon binder and stuff them with the printed papers.
10- Cut out these logos in Cricut design space and put them on the binders.
That’s it! These books cost me about $5.00 each which was within my budget for our party favors.
I’ll be posting about the spice jars soon, those cost a few dollars each. This party was a little more expensive than most I do (I try to stick to under $150 per party) but because my daughter waited an additional 6 months (until COVID restrictions settled down in our area), I celebrated by spending a bit more than normal.
I hope this tutorial was helpful in how to make a DIY Just Add Magic Cookbook.
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