Miss Disneyland’s Dole Whip?

This ‘unofficial’ cookbook has the recipes you need

Ashley Craft grew up in Anaheim so close to the park, she fell asleep to the sound of the fireworks each night. Eventually, she ended up working at Disney World. So when the uber Disney fan began writing her Ashley Crafted blog in 2017, naturally she gravitated toward the Mouse. “Basically, I was looking

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for an outlet to share differ: The foods in the ent Disney information that parks are typically I had, whether that’s planmade by third parties. A ning ideas or tricks and lot of them come prepacktips, fun facts, trivia or recaged or made in a factory, ipes,” she said. “Of all the and then it’s prepared on blog posts, the (copycat) recsite. Those kinds of things ipes took off.” are not possible in a home

Now she’s the author kitchen, period. of “The Unofficial Dis

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ney Parks Cookbook” (Ad: Can you give me an ams Media, $22), a collecexample? tion of 100 dishes served at

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the parks. She has no for: The way Dole Whip mal culinary training, just is made at the Disney a love of sharing her sucparks: Dole has a powder cesses in the kitchen to help that you mix with water fans get the Disney food exand put into an industrial perience at home. They’re ice cream machine. Obviloving it: It’s made the USA ously you are not going to Today bestseller list, it’s make a powder at home. been back- ordered on AmSo when Disney put out azon for weeks and has sold their official “Dole Whip tens of thousands of copies Recipe” just a few months already. ago, it wasn’t the Dole

We caught up with her to Whip recipe, it was them find out how the book came creating a copycat for you about. to make at home.

Q: Disney does not like to reveal its secrets.

So how did you get bold enough to write this?

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: Great question. I’ve had a lot of people asking me similar questions. Especially now during the pandemic, Disney has really upped their sharing of recipes online. People are calling (them) the official Disney recipes, but they aren’t really — they’re just recipes that Disney has decided to share that are also copycat recipes.

Q: So if they’re coming from Disney, why are they not official?

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: I get it now. A colleague who covers

Disney regularly has always said she thinks the churros come out of a frozen package. Yours are fresh made.

A: Totally. I’ve had people tell me consistently that my churros are better because they

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are fresh — I mean, you’re : What did you find? making them from scratch

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at home. So they’re really : Dole Whip, good. I’m doing the exchurros, Mickey act same thing that Disney Pretzel — those are all redoes (in releasing recipes ally, really popular. to the public): approximating how to create the flavor and visual profiles in your home kitchen.

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: It surprised me that some park-goers think the turkey legs are actually emu legs! What surprised you the most while writing this book?

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: An emu leg would be like the size of : Aw! So you brought your torso, not the same the park to your famsize category as a turkey ily, just like you’re doing leg. People are crazy. What for readers? surprised me the most?

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Just how many treats Dis: I have people mesney serves. I ended up havsage me almost eving to trim back because ery day, thanking me for there’s so many. I mean, bringing magic into their we’re talking about six kitchens. That’s amazing. parks just in the U.S. It’s so great to see people excited about it and enjoying it like I do.

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: How did you decide which recipes made the final cut?

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: I wrote this book as if I was going to buy it. Like if I saw it on a shelf and flipped through it, what recipes do I want to see in there? I made sure I started with all those things and then tried to find out what everybody else’s favorites were too. I would go online and search “Top 10 Disneyland” or “Top 10 Disney World” to see what kind of lists people were making.

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: Did you feed these dishes to fans to get their opinions or did you just trust your palate?

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: My family was my taste test. I did almost all of the recipe testing during the pandemic — in April and the first half of May.

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: Well, it sounds like there’s going to be a follow-up.

A: I’m publishing a second book! “The Unofficial Disney Parks Drink Recipe Book” will be coming in 2021.