Make-a-mix

Still a great cookbook, after all these years!
Decades ago my mother gave me the original Make-A-Mix Cookbook. I’ve just about worn it out. Although I certainly have not tried every single recipe, I have used a couple of the basic ones lots and lots. My most used mixes are the Hot Roll Mix and the Quick Mix.We always get rave reviews on the Crescent Rolls made using the Hot Roll Mix. This recipe can make a beginner look like a pro. This particular recipe has given me superb results 100% of the times I’ve used it. My daughter-in-law, a newbie at bread making, provided these rolls at her family’s Thanksgiving last year and they were a total success. I usually use my Bosch for these but I have also done them the old fashioned way and they were still wonderful. I’ve even made the Cinnamon Rolls while camping (RV camping-you need an oven). Speaking of Cinnamon Rolls, I usually double or triple some of the topping ingredients.The Quick Mix makes pancakes that are divine. You might think that a pancake is a pancake is a pancake, but these are really great. Mmmmm, I want one right now!The Hot Chocolate Mix is a wonderful recipe that I use each Christmas as a give-away. But I do add 50% more chocolate than what the recipe calls for.This book would be worth it for me if only for those few favorites. I don’t store a lot of the mixes that the book has, just a few of my favorites. I also have not used very many of the “meat-type” mixes although the ones that I have, I thought were very good. If you want to do make ahead easy (mostly freezer) meals, this is also a good book for that, although that has not been my use of it.I’ve read others reviews that the brownies are not really up-to-par, but I’ve not ever tried that mix.Last spring I got the hankerin’ to learn to make a cheesecake so I used the cheesecake recipe as a springboard, studying a lot of other methods and coming up with my own. I’ve made 2 now and they’ve both been perfect. So from that I feel like this book can also be a good reference source. Although this type of cooking is for the ones who want to spend a lot of time studying and trying things, it can also serve the quick cook who just wants to get the recipe and make the grub.The book has quite a few good pictures of the dishes and that is often helpful.This new book has all of the great recipes I fell in love with, plus a lot of additional recipes. It was definitely a great gift for my d-i-l.Yes, I’m a fan, an old fan!

Fills a niche, but misses a mark
Make-a-Mix is a great concept cookbook. It provides do-it-yourself recipes for mixes that you can then later turn into cooked dishes at a moment’s notice. Ranging from slice-and-bake sugar cookies, to gravy mix, to a sweet quick-bread mix, you’ll find everything from breakfast to dessert to main-dish meat mixes. The cover advertises 306 recipes made from 67 mixes.The layout of the recipes is fairly clear, although there’s something about the font and placement of the “makes…” portion (the part of the mix recipe that points you to the other pages in the cookbook where you’ll find recipes that use it) that makes it easy to overlook. There are no photos; most of these recipes are relatively simple, so that isn’t a huge deal in my opinion.For a book founded on the principle of making things from mixes I guess I expected them to want to showcase the versatility of those mixes as much as possible; after all, I don’t see the point in keeping a single-purpose mix around for most things—I doubt many people constantly make a single type of brownies or cornbread over and over. On the other hand, some of these are fairly versatile, such as the sweet quickbread mix.The one glaring omission we came across was in the “Our Best Brownies” recipe. We quickly found that there was just no way you could make a brownie batter out of the mix with the amount of liquid provided in the recipe—it seemed clear an ingredient had been omitted. We were able to add enough liquid to make it come out decently, but the brownies weren’t particularly amazing. Luckily the cornbread recipe made up for it in terms of quality.

An excellent read and highly useful. Obviously I am a keen cook but this little volume contains real pearls of wisdom. Money saving, convenience, healthy, creative. These are just some of the benefits of taking the authors advice. Highly recommended

muy practico, eso si en ingles. hay algunos ingredientes que no encontraras en España, por lo demás me encanta. Lo recomiendo

Another great book buy these 3 women. Wonderful recipes and a very easy read. Great book to have in your kitchen. I would highly recommend this book. It’s not the latest edition but pretty darn close!