Staple Store: DIY Magic Mix - Catie Gett

Catie Gett

Available to pre-order now, expecting stock early December 

Please note : If you pre-order an item and add more items in stock, we will ship the order together when the pre-order arrives. Release dates are subject to change, we don't send out emails, any changes are updated on the website.

Let us introduce the Staple Spin-offs:

More fun in the kitchen. More magic on your plate. No drama or trauma at the stove. These recipes have been tested in real kitchens with blunt knives, crying toddlers, and zero mental bandwidth... and they still work.

Each book has 98 pages, 30+ recipes and photos.

Where they came from

These books started as zines, little projects between volumes. The longer I wrote, the bigger they got, until they weren't zines anymore. They were cookbooks in their own right.

Same simple steps. Accessible ingredients. Clever, quick prep. Limited equipment. Recipes that work, not curated to impress and not pretending to be more, because that's how people actually cook: with kids hanging off them, or cooking for one, or managing budgets and bandwidth that can't stretch to complicated cooking that doesn't work.

DIY Magic Mix

Magic is the secret power of making impossible things happen by doing special things. One DIY cake mix costs around 60c to throw together at home.

I'm not a fancy baker. If it needs more than "stir" and "pop in the oven," I've usually checked out. What I bake is good (it tastes good), simple (the least labour-intensive method possible), and clever (how do I make it even better and even simpler next time?).

Simple isn't a compromise. It's elegant design. Like all good design, simplicity is about subtraction and innovation.

This mix was not a happy accident. It took hundreds of iterations, cooked in dozens of kitchens and different-sized tins. Every type of sugar was tested against every combination of ingredients. It was a labour of love to find one recipe that could hold different ingredients and work every time, with the least equipment, skill, and ingredients possible, building confidence for even the most novice baker.

This is baking that lives in your back pocket. Your go-to. Your whip-it-up-at-the-last-minute, with cake on the table within an hour when an unexpected guest arrives. It's humble. A signature of love and care, without the drama.

Already been made in hundreds of homes, thousands of times, and despite people's best efforts, it's almost impossible to fumble. It will be the reason you stop buying cake from the supermarket, and the reason the smell of baking wafts from your windows and doors, even if you never thought you could bake from scratch. I think that in itself is magical.