Cooking Games – Root Beer Floats

It might be cold outside, but that is no reason you can’t enjoy a root beer float. These classic ice cream treats are great anytime of the year and have a different flavor than you might be expecting, so be prepared to enjoy a new kind of treat!

Start by grabbing a large glass to hold your treat. Use a spoon or ice cream scoop to scoop up two or three large scoops of vanilla ice cream. It is best to go with a plain vanilla here – vanilla bean might have a bit to much flavor for proper blending. Place the ice cream scoops into the glass.

Open a fresh bottle of root beer. Different brands have different flavors, so you might get recommendations from a friend if you haven’t tried them all before. Slowly pour the root beer over the ice cream in the cup. You can expect a great deal of fizz as the ice cream reacts with the root beer, but that’s part of the fun. Grab a thick straw and get to work enjoying your delicious treat.

Cooking Games Keep You Warm in the Wintertime

When it’s cold outside, there is nothing better than warm food to heat you right back up. That is the best part about cooking games – in the kitchen or online, you have the opportunity to create delicious hot treats for yourself and others.

Keeping Active
It’s easy to feel cold or be down about yucky weather when you’re just moping around. Quit whining and feeling sorry for yourself, use the time indoors to build your skills in something you like, namely cooking games. You can sit down at the computer along with a sweatshirt, warm socks and nimble fingers to see how far you can take your skills, or head to the kitchen where you can put your skills to the test in a real way.

Staying Focused
Once your mind is focused on something, it’s easy to get carried along on a wave of fun. You might decide to play a few rounds of cooking games online and then see just how well those skills carry over into the kitchen. Before you know it, you might have mastered the online barbeque and find yourself in the kitchen testing marinades and preparing to cook a delicious dinner for the whole family.

Cooking Games: Gingerbread Houses

I love gingerbread houses. If you don’t cook them exactly right, you wind up with cookies a bit too hard to eat easily, but that just makes them that much better for decorating. The ideal, of course, is to make your gingerbread house firm enough to decorate easily, but soft enough devour when the holiday mood strikes.

Making Gingerbread Houses
The easiest way to make gingerbread houses is to buy the mix from store that requires just a handful of ingredients or even better, buy the ready made dough that you can just roll out and start cutting. Cutting out your gingerbread house will require a knife and steady hand rather than cookie cutters. You'll need to make the four wall and the two roof sections before baking.

Decorating Gingerbread Houses
Cut out the gingerbread sections and bake them according to instructions. When they are baked to a golden brown, allow the sections to cool before decorating. Use icing tubes to stick the sections together and then candy to decorate the little house. Your gingerbread house can be a great decoration or you can start nibbling on it just as soon as you get it all put together.

Cooking Games – Frito Pie

Long a cold weather favorite, Frito Pie, or chili pie in some areas, is extremely easy to make and mighty tasty on a snowy or rainy day. To make Frito Pie, you’ll need:

• Fritos Chips
• Cheddar Cheese
• Chili
• Onions
• Jalapeños

Start by dicing the onions into tiny pieces. You want a bit of flavor, not texture in your dish, so make them extra small. Always use the knife carefully, of course.

Put the onions aside and pull out the Fritos. Pour the Fritos into a casserole dish. Open the can of chili and pour it over the Fritos being sure to cover them completely. Throw in a handful of onions over the chili before coating the concoction with shredded cheddar cheese. If you like the taste of the jalapeños, you can add them on top – but if you don’t like hot things, simply leave them off.

Bake your Frito pie in the oven for about fifteen minutes to heat the chili and melt the cheese. Remove it from the oven and serve it up in bowls or plates – enjoy this hot, yummy treat as often as you want!

Cooking Games – Peanut Butter and Chocolate

I’m convinced that nothing goes together better than peanut butter and chocolate. Fortunately, one of my very favorite holiday treats uses both of these items. Simple to make and even simpler to eat, peanut butter chocolate drops are truly yummy.

What You’ll Need:

• Peanut Butter Cookie Dough
• Hershey’s Kisses

Make perfectly round balls of cookie dough about an inch across. Place each one onto a cookie sheet. You’ll want to roll the balls by hand rather than just scooping them up. This is a time that neatness really does count, so stick to it (and wash your hands well, first.)

Put the cookies inside the oven according to the instructions on the cookie dough package. While you wait, you can peel the wrappers from the Hershey’s kisses. Place the open kisses in a bowl or on a plate.

When you pull the cookies out of the oven, you’ll have a collection of perfectly round peanut butter cookies. Place a kiss in the middle of each. The heat of the cookie will melt the chocolate holding it in place. Yum!

Cooking Games – Salt Dough Ornaments

A great Christmas time tradition are salt dough ornaments. You can make these ornaments using materials you likely have around the house already. Bake them until hard and then paint, color or use glitter to make them truly shine for small gifts and keepsakes on wrapped packages.

Combine ½ cup salt, 1 cup flour and ½ cup water in a bowl. Mix it well and then use a rolling pin to roll it out to ¼ inch thick. Use your favorite holiday and Christmas cookie cutters to make the ornaments and be sure to use a toothpick to widen a small hole at the top of each for a string or hanger. Place each finished ornament on a cookie sheet and when ready, bake all of them at 200 degrees for two hours.

When the ornaments are cooled off, you can use poster paints to create the ornaments. Use glitter and glaze to make them shine and then thread a festive ribbon through the tops so that friends and family can add the ornaments to their tree this holiday season.

Cooking Games – Are You a Master Chef?

There is only one place to go if you like cooking games, and that place is at the top of your game. If you play cooking games often enough online, you’ll notice your skills improving. Soon you can master level after level of burger flipping and pizza making. But the ultimate challenge can only be issued by another gamers – who among you wil be the Master Chef.

Here’s how to play.

Grab a friend or two and get set up to play the same game at the same time. You can set this up over the phone or over IM. IM is actually easier as you can send the link to the game to whomever you please. Once you have at least one competitor, start playing head-to-head. Go through level after level to see who comes out ahead each time.

It’s only a true contest if yu use different skills, however, so you should play at least three different games in this way. The best out of the three is the official winner and can be crowned the Master Chef. Good luck and keep practicing!

Cooking Games – Gingerbread Men

What could be yummier at Christmas time than a slew of gingerbread men? This cooking game is fun for younger brothers and sisters, too – especially if you cheat and use the ready to bake cookie dough.

To make gingerbread men, you’ll need:

Ready to bake gingerbread cookie dough (it comes in a tube)
Gingerbread men cookie cutters
Icing in tubes
Candies

Roll out the dough and cut out the gingerbread men. As you cut each, carefully place it on the cookie sheet. As each sheet fills, bake according to the dough’s instructions. Remove the men when still warm. You can’t put the icing on until the cookies are cool, but any candy that will be stuck on the gingerbread men should be done quickly after removing the sheet from the oven You can also use icing later to glue on gum drop buttons and the like.

Push in any candy pieces while the cookie is still hot and then allow the cookies to cool completely. When they are hardened and cool, use small tubes of icing to decorate each. Add faces, buttons, arm and leg decorations and anything else you can think of to make the gingerbread men fun for the holiday season.

Cooking Games – Wassail

A delicious holiday drink, Wassail (pronounced Wass-el) is a tradition in many countries already, and might become one of your favorite traditions this year. After all, cooking games aren’t just about foods – they can be about drinks, too.

To make wassail, you’ll need:

1 gallon apple cider
27 whole cloves
8 cinnamon sticks
1 quart pineapple juice
1 can (6 ounce) frozen orange juice concentrate

Grab a large cooking pot and start adding ingredients. There is no rhyme or reason to how you should add things, so just dump them all in. When you’ve added everything, set the pot on medium-low temperature over the stove. There is no need to cover it. You should stir occasionally to ensure all ingredients are blending smoothly.

Gradually the ingredients will all melt and start to mix. The rich smell of the wassail will be unbelievable, so indulge yourself in its rich smells all day as you let it simmer gently on the stove. So long as it is just resting on a warm burner, there is no overcooking the beverage. When it’s time to drink, stir well and pour into festive holiday glasses – enjoy!