The Disney Christmas Cookbook: 50 Delicious Recipes!

by Joy Howard, Walt Disney Company

Get ready for Christmas with your favorite Disney and Pixar characters! This holiday cookbook for kids makes learning how to cook fun and downright magical. Inspired by fan-favorite Disney and Pixar films, these 50 recipes will have beginner chefs whipping up everything from hearty breakfasts to sweet desserts in no time. Featuring 50 beginner-friendly recipes with simple step-by-step instructions--plus mouth-watering photos of every dish--this cookbook invites readers to craft delicious holiday-themed treats while enjoying captivating illustrations of beloved Disney and Pixar heroes. Kid chefs will get a thorough introduction to kitchen basics, a difficulty rating for each recipe, and an index of vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, and gluten-free recipes. Some of the delicious recipes inside Belle's Classic Winter Porridge and Pooh Bear’s Mini Honey Buns Rapunzel's Pumpkin Hazelnut Soup and Encanto-inspired Arepas de Queso Lightning McQueen's Pot Pie and Woody’s Cowboy Chili Wreck-It Ralph's Smashed Potatoes and Ratatouille-inspired Christmas Ribbon Salad Ariel's Starfish Dip and Zootopia-inspired Hoppy Holidays Veggie Garden Wreath Never Land Hot Chocolate and Stitch’s Hawaiian Eggnog Sugar Rush Popcorn-Gumdrop Garland and Baymax S’mores Brownie Bites Don't miss these other delightful Disney cookbooks for kids! The Disney Princess Cookbook Tiana's Cookbook The Disney Villains Cookbook

Genres: Cookbooks

144 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2024

Reviews

[Miranda Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

The holidays bring a special kind of magic each year - and with an added dose of Disney, they're sure to be full of cheer!

Such a fun way to experience the holiday season with a little one!!

This Christmas-themed Disney cookbook begins with a quick introduction to the cookbook's concept before delving into several sections about basic safety and how-to-cook for beginners.

This cookbook is further split into several sections based either on time or type of food. Each section has about five to ten recipes for a total of 50 recipes.

The recipe format is fairly consistent. We have the title, a brief blurb about how the recipe connects to a Disney character, ingredients, directions, and often a tip or alternate way of making the dish at the very end. The recipe is also marked with 'gingerbreads' to show how hard or easy a dish is to make.

Without further ado, let's delve into the recipes:

Breakfast
--Rolly's Spotted Cranberry Pancakes (with walnuts and chocolate chips too)
--Monster-O's Spiced Breakfast Bars (using cheerios, nuts and flavored with cinnamon)
--Sleepy's Early Riser Egg Biscuits (mini quiches with cheese and turkey)
--Belle's Classic Winter Porridge (with milk, dried fruit, spices and chopped nuts)
--Pooh Bear's Mini Honey Buns (using refrigerated biscuit dough rolled into a spiral)
--Ariel's Puff Pastry Stars (topped with cream cheese and strawberries)
--Purr-fect French Toast (The Aristocats - challah bread with orange zest, cinnamon)
--New York City Breakfast Pizzettes (Soul - cheddar, bacon, and eggs)

Lunch
--Sweet Dough Turnovers (Tiana - pie dough with sweet potato or broccoli cheddar filling)
--Arepas de Queso (Encanto - cornflower with mozzarella cheese, fried)
--Rapunzel's Pumpkin Hazelnut Soup (with a bread-crumb topping)
--Joyful Mac & Cheese (Inside-Out - using mozzarella, white cheddar, and cauliflower)
--Lunar New Year Dumplings (Turning Red - filled with pork, ginger, garlic and scallions)
--Festive Green Bean Casserole (Tiana - topped with fried onions and cheddar cheese)
--Rapunzel Pizza Braid (pizza dough wrapped and braided around tomatoes, mozzarella and pepperoni)
--Ham Musubi (Lilo & Stitch - spam on sushi rice, wrapped in seaweed)

Dinner
--Lady and the Tramp Sheet Pan Meatballs and Sauce (homemade sauce on stove, meatballs in oven)
--Aristocat-ic Quiche Marie (bacon & Jarlsberg cheese, decorated to look like a cat)
--Lightning McQueen's Pot Pie (chicken and mixed veggie)
--Woody's Cowboy Chili (ground beef, onion, beans)
--To Infinity and Beyond Meat Loaf (Buzz Lightyear, meatloaf made into space ships)
--Sheet Pan Ratatouille with Smoked Sausage (zucchini, squash and eggplant)
--Merida's Day-After-Christmas Sliders (mini burgers, topped with stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce)
--Pinocchio's Pepperoni Pasta (bow tie pasta with kale and parmesan)
--Pork Tenderloin Planks with Green Herb Sauce (Peter Pan - cilantro, mint and basil sauce)
--Magic Hammer Chicken (Wreck-It Ralph - flattened chicken with lemon and capers)

Sides
--Wreck-It Ralph's Smashed Potatoes (seasoned with salt and pepper)
--Snow White's Cinnamon Apples (steamed apples with spices and brown sugar)
--Chicken Long Rice (Lilo & Stitch - chicken soup with ginger and glass noodles)
--Christmas Ribbon Salad (Ratatouille - you use a vegetable peeler on a cucumber instead of lettuce)
--Dreamy Winter Slaw (Sleeping Beauty - kale, brussels sprouts, almonds, & pomegranate seeds)

Snacks
--Frozen Banana Dalmatian Pops (frozen bananas, dipped in white chocolate with dark chocolate chips stuck on the sides)
--Ariel's Starfish Dip (peppers cut in half, filled with a veggie-dip, with the other half of the pepper making a star)
--Aurora's Yummy Yogurt Dip (savory, Greek yogurt, lemon juice and spices)
--Peanut Butter Puppy Chow (Lady and the Tramp - puppy chow, M'n'Ms, pretzels)
--Hoppy Holidays Garden Veggie Wreath (Zootopia - mini bagels, cream cheese, veggies arranged like a wreath)

Beverages
--Never Land Hot Chocolate with Star Marshmallows (Peter Pan - homemade marshmallows)
--Jiminy Cricket Milkshake (Pinocchio - mint chocolate ship milkshake with oreos)
--Aunt Cass's Apple Cider (Big Hero Six -apple cider, oranges and spices)
--Stitch's Hawaiian Eggnog (cream of coconut, pineapple wedges)
--Auga de Jamaica (Coco - hibiscus flowers, cinnamon and sugar)

Sweets
--Sherwood Forest Peppermint Bark (Robin Hood - white chocolate, candy canes, mini marshmallows)
--Dumbo's Big Top Candy Cane Cupcakes (vanilla cupcakes decorated to look like candy canes)
--Sugar Rush Popcorn-Gumdrop Garland (Wreck-It Ralph - popcorn, gumdrops, marshmallows from Never Land Hot Chocolate recipe)
--Little Green Gingerbread Alien Cookies (Toy Story - decorated to look like the aliens)
--Glass Ornament Cookies (Cinderella - sugar cookies with shapes cut out the center and melted hard candy inside the holes)
--Mini Christmas Cannoli (Luca - classic cannoli with sprinkles on the side)
--Mini Buche de Noel (Aristocats - swiss rolls decorated to look like logs)
--Baymax S'mores Brownie Bites (brownie cookies with a marshmallow decorated to look like Baymax on top)
--Wonderland Meringues (Alice in Wonderland - mushroom shaped meringues, colored)

Step By Step Instructions & Dietary Considerations & Glossary
--Step-by-Step: This is a section at the end that expands on a few of the trickier recipes (i.e. puff pastry stars, glass ornament cookies, dumplings, etc).
--Dietary Considerations: Here the recipes are categorized by common dietary restrictions: dairy-free, gluten-free, nut-free, vegetarian or vegan.
--Glossary: Common and unusual cooking terms are defined (i.e. beat vs blend vs fold)

Overall Thoughts on the Cookbook

This is a fairly good holiday cookbook - it is organized well and has a good layout. The recipes have a good mix of quick-meals and more intricate meals. I liked the extra sections in the back to expand upon the recipes that used more complicated techniques.

There was a decent spread food across various cultures that celebrate wintry holidays. And I liked how each recipe had a very clear tie-in to a specific Disney movie and the culture associated with that movie.

However, something to be aware of: The recipes are related more in aesthetic rather than in content.

Meaning instead of making something that the characters are seen eating or holding in the movies, we are making items based on their character (with some being stronger successes than others).

For example: Belle's winter porridge, Mini Christmas Cannolis for Luca, or Turning Red's Lunar New Year Dumplings all make sense. The recipes aren't necessarily something that the characters are shown eating in the story but the recipes still connect to the characters and give off that holiday feeling.

But then there are some recipes where the connection seems tenuous at best - like the Wonderland Meringues or Lady and the Tramp Sheet Pan Meatballs and Sauce - I can see the connection to the movies but not necessarily to Christmas or other wintry holidays.

And then there's the recipes that had me scratching my head at their inclusion

For example: Both the Rolly's Spotted Cranberry Pancakes and the Frozen Banana Dalmatian Pops both include chocolate in the recipes - something that dogs cannot eat (quite famously). There's other recipes like Lightning McQueen's Pot Pie

I suppose the connection is the polka-dot the chips for the Dalmatians and the pot pie has a lightning bolt cut out the middle for Cars...but that does feel like a bit of a stretch to include recipes that the characters literally cannot eat.

One really nice thing about this cookbook is the consistent pictures of the recipes and the drawings of the various Disney characters that also decorated each page.

There were some pictures were really closely related to the recipes - like for Wreck-It Ralph's Smashed Potatoes. Ralph is holding a pan of potatoes while Princess Vanellope is using a masher to squish them.

However, a majority of the pictures were just characters in a general wintry or seasonal theme (not necessarily themed to that specific recipe).

Part of me wondered where some of the art came from because I don't think it was all created specifically for the cookbook.

For example, for Sleepy's Early-Riser Egg Biscuits (a quiche recipe), there is a picture of Snow White serving the Seven Dwarfs a holiday roast while Sleepy sits with an empty plate and silverware clutched in his hand.

And then for Big Hero 6, Aunt Cass, Hiro and Baymax are baking and icing gingerbread cookies but the recipe is for Aunt Cass's Apple Cider.

But I will admit these are rather small potatoes when you look at the cookbook on a whole. This is a rather sweet Holiday themed cookbook with plenty of fun, exciting, and new recipes to try!

[Marion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely Disney illustrations throughout the book. Some recipes are definitely for adults to do, but there are some that kids can do or help with.

[Panda Incognito · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unlike other Disney cookbooks that I have read, this one includes recipes themed for a wide variety of Disney and Pixar movies, instead of focusing on characters from the Disney Princesses line. Some of the recipes have a clear connection to the movie they're based on, and others feel like a stretch.

The recipes are organized by type, with chapters for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as chapters for snacks, beverages, and dessert. The book includes a good mix of main dishes, side dishes, and treats, and the difficulty level varies. Most kids will need a great deal of parental help to follow these recipes, especially since the instructions are brief. They frequently combine or gloss over steps, assuming that there's an experienced and highly competent cook in the room.

There is a list in the back about which recipes work for diary-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan diets. Many of the recipes don't have a lot of ingredients, so there are lots of options for substitutions. I appreciate the sensitivity to people with special dietary needs.