I prefer to organize my recipes in a binder with plastic sleeves, but if you want something ready-made, the Me and My Big Ideas (MAMBI) Happy Planner recipe book may be a good fit for you.

Details:

• Laminated Covers
• 8 Laminated Dividers
  • Family Favorites
  • Main Dishes
  • Slow-Cooker
  • Entertaining
  • Healthy Fare
  • Quick & Easy
  • Desserts
  • Miscellaneous
• Space for 192 Recipes
• 10 Market Lists
• Glossary of Common Cooking Terms
• Measurement Equivalent Chart
• Casual & Formal Table Setting Diagram

Dimensions:
Covers – 7.75” x 9.75”
Pages – 7” x 9.25”

I recorded a quick video showing a closer look at what’s included, and some of the pros and cons:

To enlarge the screen of the video, click the square icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video (it will say ‘full screen’ when you hover your mouse over the icon).

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MAMBI Recipe Book Pros

• Customisable – I’m a huge fan of the discbound system. The MAMBI recipe book, like their planners, use discs similar to the Arc Planner. I previously blogged about why I use the Arc Planner instead of binders – the main reason being the ability to add new pages and rearrange as needed
• You can pull out pages if your hand-writing is messy and you make a mistake, or you want to pull the recipe page out of the book and have it in front of you while cooking and don’t have a recipe book stand (although I highly recommend you invest in one!)
• Includes a kitchen conversions page – if you live in Australia like I do, you’ve probably stumbled across a yummy looking recipe where the quantities were in ounces – that’s where this kitchen conversions page come in handy
• The laminated cover is quite thick laminate, you’d have to throw it around a fair bit for it to get damaged and it’s easy to wipe clean of kitchen spills
• The colors used in this planner make it non-gender specific. If you know a bloke that likes to cook then this would make a good gift
• There is an expansion pack with extra recipe pages and tabs if you need more recipe pages but don’t want to pay for an entire new recipe book

 

Related Post: How to organize recipes plus a free printable recipe binder

MAMBI Recipe Book Cons

• No space for photos on the recipe pages
• The aqua discs by themselves are nice but when combined with the cover the entire combination just doesn’t seem to fit. The colors don’t match and the cover would look wayyyy better with black discs
• The cover is not very nice – to be honest I was really disappointed with it. The covers on their dated planners are soooo pretty but the cover of the recipe book is very plain and boring
• There are no checkboxes or lists format for noting the ingredients – only lined writing space – I prefer list format so I can easily glance and make sure I’ve used all of the ingredients when I’m in the middle of cooking (I have accidentally missed adding ingredients before – that slice didn’t turn out tasting very good!)
• Recipe pages are a bit small – they have a large sidebar where you can record notes, the main ingredients in the recipe etc. but it does take away space to write the ingredients and directions
• If you’re a Masterchef and like to bake recipes that have a lot of steps, you may have trouble fitting the entire recipe into the directions section
• Should be more recipe categories – there are only 8 recipe categories and they’re missing the most crucial one of all (baked goods! 🙂
• The cover is laminated and laminate tends to attract dust

Related post: Honest review of the Happy Planner by Me and my Big Ideas (MAMBI)

If you don’t want to spend the time creating your own recipe binder or want to give something as a gift so someone who’s maybe not as picky about planners as me 🙂 then the MAMBI recipe book would make a good gift.

I hope you found this honest review helpful! If you did want to purchase the MAMBI recipe book, my sister stocks it in her online store and in her Etsy shop. She also stocks the Happy Planner accessories like the planner stickers, stamps etc.

Want to download some free printables? Click here to access the free printables library