Saturday, March 28, 2009

Cooking Games – Easter Eggs


Easter eggs are a tradition at Easter. To make the most colorful eggs found anywhere, you’ll need a dozen eggs and a set of egg dyes.

Hard-boil the Eggs
Your first step is to hard-boil the dozen eggs. This ensures the eggs are safe to be outside of the refrigerator for a few minutes while you dye them and that they can be more easily eaten when Easter is over.

To hard-boil the eggs, place the raw eggs into a sauce pan with cold water. Bring the eggs to a roiling boil and then reduce heat for ten minutes. After ten minutes, remove the eggs from the water and rinse in cold water. Now your eggs are ready to color.

Coloring the Easter Eggs
To color the eggs, you need to follow the instructions on the dye. Likely you’ll need to drop the tablets into vinegar until they dissolve. Then drop the hardboiled egg into the colored dye and wait. The longer you wait the deeper the color will be.

Use the metal scooper that likely accompanies the eggs to remove it from the dye and place it in a special holder (likely the box the dye came in) to allow the egg to dry completely. Hide it, eat it, enjoy!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Cooking Games – Candy Cookies


The best cookies are the ones that use candy – in my humble opinion. To make the best candy cookies, you’ll simply need to gather your favorite kinds of candy and start with some cookie dough. The rest of this cooking game is child’s play.

Ingredients for Candy Cookies
Ready-to-bake cookie dough in sugar cookie and peanut butter cookie flavors
Bags of your favorite chocolate, peanut butter, candy coated and other candies

Creating Candy Cookies
To make candy cookies, start by arranging the cookies on a cookie sheet. Smash them a bit flat to give yourself plenty of space to work on in each cookie.

Then begin to exercise creativity by pushing in different kinds of candy on each cookie. You can make letters on the cookie using the candy or just make creative patterns and designs. When all of the cookies are completed, bake until they are ready to be eaten. As a final step, you can use decorator’s icing to add additional elements to each.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Cooking Games – Biscuit Pizza


Another fun recipe with biscuits allows you to make pizza any time you feel like it.

Cooking Game Ingredients

Gather:
A tin of ten biscuits
Pizza sauce
Mozzarella cheese
Desired toppings

Cooking Games – Biscuit Pizza
Open the tin of biscuits and put all five onto a jelly roll or pizza pan. Begin mashing the biscuits together until you have a lump of dough. Stretch the dough out over the pan until it is covered in a uniform coating of dough. If the dough pulls away from the edges, your pizza will still cook well.

Put the pan with the dough in the oven for about five minutes to prebake. This will keep the middle of the pizza from being too soggy.

Pull out the dough and spread the pizza crust with sauce and the add cheese and other ingredients. Bake the pizza again until the crust is brown and the cheese is golden and bubbly.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Cooking Games – Pigs in a Blanket


A favorite of toddlers and scouts everywhere, pigs in a blanket are simple to make and a great way to enjoy a fun breakfast or even dinner if you use them with another item such as pancakes.

Cooking Game Ingredients

Gather:
A tin of ten biscuits
A pack ten hot dogs
A baking sheet
Cooking spray

Cooking Games – Pigs in a Blanket
Open the tin of biscuits and separate the individual biscuits. Open your pack of hot dogs. Take one biscuit and wrap it around the first hot dog. Carefully seal the biscuit by pushing the edges together, try to get as much of the hot dog wrapped up as possible. Repeat this with all of the hot dogs. When your baking sheet is holding ten wrapped hot dogs, place the tray into the oven to bake according to the instructions on the biscuit tin. The hot dogs will cook inside the biscuit giving you a delicious, hearty treat.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Cooking Games: Gorp


Easily one of my favorite cooking games, making gorp doesn’t require any special skills and you don’t even need a real recipe. Gorp changes based on the season, the contents of your pantry and your mood that day. But since we must all start somewhere, I’ll offer you a basic idea of how to make your own gorp.

Gorp Ingredients:
Dry Cereal – The whole grain variety is obviously best, and you want something that isn’t going to flake apart and make a huge mess.
Nuts – Peanuts are always an option as are walnuts, pecans and almonds
Dried Fruit – Raisins might be the first kind to come to mind, but don’t discount dried bananas, cherries, strawberries or peaches.

Gorp Instructions
Mix ¼ cup of all ingredients together into a plastic zipper bag. Shake the bag a few times to mix things up and then walk out of the door or sit on the couch. Gorp is designed to be easy nutrition on the go – whether you’re going out and about or not going anywhere at all. Try different varieties every day to find something that works for your mood that day and always enjoy!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Cooking Games Are Better Than Ever


If you’ve loved cooking games in the past, you can still enjoy the games you loved then, but there are even more games out there to play. Like all good things, cooking games have grown better with time and now there are hugely realistic games you can play for fun or to actually learn a bit while enjoying.

Cooking Games For Fun
Cooking games are always fun. The thrill of beating the clock and using your skills to do the tasks assigned are the basics of any game, and cooking games are no exception. Playing cooking games in your spare time, and especially when you should be doing something else, makes for a fun afternoon. They kill time nicely and make it fun – unlike homework, studying and meetings.

Cooking Games to Learn
You can also learn from cooking games. By playing games where you prepare food virtually, you can learn to prepare food in reality. Sure a virtual stove isn’t the same as the real deal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn the basics of how and when to flip your bacon or burgers. You can learn far more than you realize playing cooking games – it’s simply a matter of realizing what’s happening around you.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Cooking Games: Strawberry Mice


Especially fun for preschoolers, strawberry mice are fun to make and fun to eat. The cute red mice make a nice addition to a kid-friendly buffet especially.

Gather Ingredients for Cooking Games
To assemble the mice you’ll need:

Fresh strawberries
Mini chocolate chips
Black icing
Almond slivers
Toothpicks
Red lace licorice
Cheese wedge

Making Strawberry Mice
Wash your strawberries and the cut away a small section from the bottom of each so that the strawberries sit flat on a platter. Cut away any green on the strawberries as well leaving the back intact if possible.

Place a mini chocolate chip in as the mouse’s nose and use the icing to make tiny eyes for your mouse. The icing can help hold the chocolate chip in place as well as necessary. Use almond slivers as ears by sticking them up on the top of what will become the mouse’s head.

Finally, insert a toothpick into the mouse’s backend. On the end of the toothpick that is sticking out, push on a piece of red licorice as a tail. Make it long enough to be interesting, but not so long it’s unreasonable to handle. Arrange the mice in groups of three or four around small wedges of cheese.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Cooking Games: Sandwich on a Stick


This is an awesome treat for younger brothers and sisters or if you have to bring food to a picnic or some such gathering. Making sandwiches on a stick doesn’t take too much time and is an activity that younger family members can help with as well. It’s simply a matter of putting ingredients together.

Gather Ingredients for Cooking Games
For sandwiches on a stick you’ll need:

Thick slices of bread
Thick slices of deli meat
Cheese cubes
Green lettuce
Cherry tomatoes
Olives
Skewers

Prepare Sandwiches on a Stick
To make the sandwiches, you’ll need to prepare some of the ingredients. The cheese cubes are the perfect size, so now you’ll need to cut down the deli meat to be the same size. You’ll also need to cut squares of bread. You’ll probably opt to leave the crust off the bread cubes, but you can leave them on as desired.

Take a skewer and start threading the items through, You’ll want to start with the bottom of the “sandwich” and work your way up. You might thread on a piece of bread followed by a cheese cube. Follow this with a cheery tomato and then a meat cube. Add another cheese cube, some more meat and then a piece of green lettuce. Put on another bread cube and then an olive as a garnish on top. Enjoy eating your sandwich on a stick.