Life Day may be November 20th but the recipes in Star Wars: The Life Day Cookbook are sure to be a hit no matter the season. This is a “sequel” to the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge: The Official Black Spire Outpost Cookbook. Along with a wide range of recipes, each one comes with an interesting backstory that fits right in with the Star Wars universe. I was happy to see classic recipes such as egg nog and hot chocolate with a galaxy from a far far away twist.
The recipes are broken down by a story, ingredients, prep time, cook time, yield, difficulty, and of course, the instructions on how to prepare the meal. I like that they include difficulty because not all items are beginner-friendly and this prevents some frustration from newer chefs. There are a total of six sections including appetizers and snacks, side dishes, main courses, desserts, drinks, and how to celebrate Life Day at home. They also included a section for dietary considerations and measurement conversions.
The dietary considerations is a great section because it lists all the recipes and which ones are vegetarian, gluten-free, vegan, or easily made vegetarian, vegan, or gluten-free with some alterations.
For this review, my husband made Crait Crusted Cod, Bantha Surprise, Kabatha Crisps, Keshian Spiced Milk, and Bantha Milk Hot Chocolate. It was an interesting couple of weeks while he tried these out and thankfully, we only had one dud out of the bunch.
The Crait Crusted Cod looks amazing in the book, but unfortunately, it fell flat for us because it was just way too salty. This makes sense because it calls for four cups of kosher salt. The difficulty on this was medium so it’s possible that my husband’s skills were just not up to par for this one.
Bantha Surprise was a lovely take on beef stew (and it reminded me of Gaston’s Pure Paragon Beef Stew in the Disney Villains: Devilishly Delicious Cookbook I checked out a few months ago). Despite not having a dutch oven, it still comes out just fine using our stovetop pot. This was also a medium difficulty.
Kabatha Crisps is the Star Wars version of elephant ears that you would get at a carnival. You make your dough from scratch which is part of the fun for my husband. He is really learning to enjoy that kind of thing. This is a medium-difficulty recipe but in all honesty, it didn’t look that hard from what I saw.
Keshian Spiced Milk and Bantha Milk Hot Chocolate were both…interesting…to say the least. Don’t get me wrong, they were good and easy to make but they were different. The spiced milk tasted like the milk you have leftover after eating cinnamon toast crunch cereal. Bantha Milk Hot Chocolate had a unique flavor because not only was it blue but it also has a dollop of cream cheese mixture on top. We were fans of both, but they were not something we could drink a whole glass of right off the bat.
Unlike the Villians cookbook I checked out earlier this year, this one does not have recommendations on making a drink recipe “adult-friendly.” All recipes are by default kid-approved.
The one thing I don’t like about this cookbook is the lack of information on any special equipment you might need for a recipe. You really need to read the instructions before committing to making anything in this book because you might run into issues. It would be nice if there was a section of tools of the trade so to speak that you will need with possible substitutions if you don’t have the recommended item.
If you are a Star Wars fan and love to cook, this is one cookbook you will want to pick up. It has a wide variety of food items with non-dietary and dietary restrictions for anyone in your family. It’s MSRP is $20.99 and available at your local bookseller.
Disclaimer: GeekMom was given a review copy.
