“If American Girl has taught us anything, it’s that girlhood is and always will be something to celebrate.”
*cracks knuckles* I was made for this review.
Since October 2025, I have been on an American Girl book binge and roughly 200ish books later, I can confidently say that I’m almost halfway done. Almost .
So, while I have not read the entirety of the American Girl franchise, but I feel like I can provide perspective regarding whether this book it is worth your time (both as a recipe book and as a themed cookbook centered around this franchise).
Without further ado, I’m first going to evaluate the cookbook on a whole then provide feedback on the individual sections at the end.
Evaluating this cookbook: Is this worth your money?
There are three main elements that I feel are important regarding if this themed book is worth your time – the franchise connection, the recipes, and the cohesiveness of it as a cookbook.
The Franchise Connection – ★★★★★
Honestly, I am impressed by the connection between the dolls and the recipes. Every. Single. Recipe. is thoroughly grounded in an American Girl character either from the historical or the girl of the year series. I really liked the commitment to have a recipe from each girl and to have so much information given about them.
For example, Kirsten’s “Beautiful Braided Cinnamon Buns” comes with two paragraphs explaining why the buns were chosen and a full page dedicated to her and explaining who she is as a character. And there’s a photograph of her doll wearing her St Lucia outfit as well!
Something to consider: we don’t get to see pictures of each recipe but often there are illustrations of ingredients or the final dish. For example, Figgy Piggy Treats shows an drawing of a fig and of the final dish.
Overall, I do feel like you get the vibe that this cookbook is a celebration of the dolls and how much they’ve meant to people over the decades.
The Recipe Selection – ★★★★☆
The recipes chosen are good (not amazing but good!) – I liked how there was a strong attempt at connecting the characters with a recipe that made sense for their era/tastes. For the most part we get a good mix of apps, salads, nibbles, sweets and so on.
Not all of the recipe selections were hits (i.e. Addy’s Alpha Bites wasn’t alphabet-shaped cookies like in her series…it was yogurt with toppings that matched alphabet letters (apricots, bananas, etc) but most of them were fine (goat cheese dip for Josefina, Blaireberry muffins for Blaire, rice krispies for Molly).
That being said, this book does run boozy. Of the 60ish recipes provided, half were drinks. So, that’s something that you should be aware of if you pick this cookbook up.
I’m not a big drinker, so while those recipes were fun to read…it did make the cookbook instantly less useful. And speaking of usefulness of the cookbook, let’s talk about ~functionality~
Functionality of the Cookbook – ★★☆☆☆
I’m going to admit it…functionality is a hot mess express.
Chapters 1 – 5 are variations on snackies. Chapter 6 is holiday-themed items. Chapter 7 is roughly birthday-themed. And Chapter 8 is boozy drinks based on the historical characters.
If you are going to group the recipes by theme (Christmas, Birthday, etc) rather than by type (apps, salads, drinks), then the recipes NEED to be distinct enough to allow your reader to understand and pull them based on their name alone.
If you pull anything from chapters 1-5, there’s nothing thematically strong enough to show you that “beautifully braided buns” belongs in Chapter 1: Conversation Starters while “Pac-Manicotti” belonged in Chapter 3: Girls Got Game.
Furthermore, the order of the recipes in each section just doesn’t make sense to me. Chapter 1 has a buns, dip, salmon app, two drinks, then muffins. Then Chapter 5 has an acai bowl, cocktail, bbq shimp, souffle, a tropical drink, then a salad.
And I’m going to cut myself off soon, but going back to Chapter 5: Girls Trip (which is supposed to recipes for a road trip/adventure) – why are we getting recipes for a frozen acai bowl? Cocktails? Salads? Why wouldn’t they choose recipes that you could eat in the car or on the go?
And while these might be little details to some, the order and the way the recipes were chosen for each section did bring this cookbook down for me.
Thoughts on the cookbook as a whole
I do wish there was more structure given to the cookbook’s recipe selection – at the very least put things in the same order with each section!!
And while the drinks were fun to read, I do think that they should’ve been limited to one section of the cookbook (I thought the historical girl themed drinks in Ch 8 were fabulous!) or put the 30ish drinks in their own book and focused more on making The Official American Girl Cookbook an actual cookbook!
While some of the recipes and general chaos brought it down for me, the theming and sheer amount of American Girl information brought the book back up to 4 stars. I’ve never seen an AG cookbook that included every Girl of the Year – so that alone was really neat.
I liked reading all of the sections and seeing the connection between the recipes and the characters. Whoever did that part of the book put their whole heart and souls into it.
So – 4 stars! Good, but not amazing…but also totally worth your time!
Miranda Reads 