Cooking Games and Safety

When playing cooking games in your home, be very aware of safety precautions. Often online cooking games fail to show you the full range of possible dangers. The fun of flipping hamburgers and making pizzas in a cartoon doesn’t include burns or sharp objects, but games in the kitchen do.

Heat
Be very careful around heat sources. Burners, pans that have been on the stove, the oven, and especially steam from opening pots and items cooked in the microwave can burn. Boiling water in the microwave can heat the water to an extremely high temperature and the steam from a bag of popcorn fresh from the microwave can have damaging results. Always use caution when dealing with any form of heat.

Sharp Objects
Be wary of sharp objects as well. Knives, scissors and open can lids are common items in a kitchen and all can give you a nasty slice if you’re not paying attention and being carefully. Keep knives sharpened as a sharp knife is less likely to slip on food as you try to cut.

Bacteria
A hidden danger in the kitchen is the amount of bacteria that can grow on surfaces. Clean well before and after all food preparation to prevent the growth and transmission of dangerous bacteria.

Cooking Games – Dirt Cake

A favorite of children, dirt cake is easy to make and just gross enough to be delicious.

Gather Cooking Game Ingredients
To make dirt cake, you’ll need:

• Chocolate sandwich cookies
• Instant chocolate pudding
• Gummy worms

Creating a Dirt Cake
To make a dirt cake, begin by fixing the instant pudding according to its directions. As the chocolate pudding is in the fridge cooling off and setting, begin working on the “dirt.”

Place about twenty chocolate cookies into a very sturdy plastic bag. The kind with a zipper is most effective. Squeeze the extra air out of the bag as you seal it. Use a rolling pin to begin crushing the cookies. Roll the pin back and forth and use the back of a spoon to help break up harder sections. Continue breaking and rolling the cookies until you have a bag full of dark crumbs that resemble dirt.

In your serving dish, sprinkle a layer of crumbs and then spoon in the pudding. Smooth the pudding flat and then add the remainder of the dirt on top of the “cake.” Stick gummy worms out of the cake at random to create a more dirt-like effect and serve!

Cooking Games and Snacks

The best way to practice cooking games is with a series of snacks. When you play cooking games online, you might be grilling up a huge meal of hot dogs and hamburgers, but when you are playing cooking games in your own kitchen, you need to take it slow. Snacks are a good way to do this.

The easiest snacks to start with are things that don’t require any heat. Try making fruit salad or crackers and cheese. Use cookie cutters to make fun shapes for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When you are allowed to use heat, you can move on to items such as microwave popcorn and noodles, but with heat comes additional safety measures that you need to follow.

While I like hot snacks as much as the next person, I’m a bigger fan of cold snacks. Why not make an ice cream sundae on a hot day or create a fruit smoothie using frozen fruit and the blender. Learning to measure ingredients and prepare any sort of food in the kitchen is a big deal and means you’re well on your way to future cooking greatness.

Cooking Games – Food Safety

When you play cooking games at home, you must be very aware of the safety aspect that go into the meal preparation. There are many dangers in the kitchen and dirty knives are just the beginning.

Knife Safety- Being safe with a knife is essential when you start cooking. Learn how to cut properly and ask for help if you’re not sure of the best way to cut. Always cut away from yourself and keep your fingers well away from the blade. Take your time to be sure you know what you’re doing and use a sharp knife. A dull knife will be more likely to slide and cause injuries.

Heat Safety – There is plenty of hot in the kitchen, so you’ll need to be careful about how you handle hot items. Always use a pot holder when picking up heated objects from the stove, oven and microwave. And remember that steam can burn as easily as hot water or a hot pot, so lean back when opening lids.

Bacteria Safety – The number of bacteria that show up on surfaces, sponges, clothes and fingers in the kitchen are astounding. Keep things clean to prevent disease from spreading. And wash your hands before and after you cook.

Cooking Games: Paper Mache

Not a traditional cooking game, but still fun, paper mache is a fun way to kill a day in the summer when you’re a bit bored. Tear off strips of newspaper and put them into a stack.

In a bowl, mix together flour and water to make a watery paste. Stir in a bottle of water-dissolving glue as well to give the mixture extra hold. When your glue mixture is ready, you can begin actually creating the paper mache.

You can make paper mache masks by dipping the newspaper in water and then laying it on your face. You’ll need to leave eyeholes and you’ll have to wait for the mask to dry.

You can make other paper mache items by blowing up balloons or creating a frame from flexible mesh or net. Whatever shape you have, dip the paper in the glue mixure and carefully lay it across the form. Layer the strips together and then leave it to dry overnight. In the morning, remove the frame or balloon if possible and enjoy painting your creation.

Cooking Games: Good Luck Cookies

I’m a huge fan of spelling things through food. And cookies are one of the best mediums to do this. Even Princess Mia used a similar technique when she had a pizza delivered with a special M&M message.

Gather Cooking Game Ingredients
To make Good Luck Cookies, you’ll need:

Sugar cookie dough
Sprinkles
Writing Icing

Making Good Luck Cookies
To make good luck cookies, start by making round balls of sugar cookie dough and baking them according to the directions. You want your cookies to be perfectly round as they bake to make the message sharper.

Before you bake the cookies, however, roll them in a plate full of sprinkles. The sprinkles should ideally just be around the sides of the cookie leaving the middle blank for some writing.

When the cookies are baked and cool, use the small tubes of writing icing to create your special message. Put one letter per cookie to spell out G-O-O-D L-U-C-K and then write carefully on other cookies inspirational messages such as “You can do it!” and smiling faces to give your friend a boost.

Cooking Games and Kitchen Clean Up

When you play cooking games, you must also be responsible for cleaning up after yourself. Cleaning up a kitchen is more than just putting ingredients away after you finish baking. You have to be sure your kitchen is completely clean.

Put Ingredients Away
Your first step is to put all the boxes, bags and containers away. All of the stuff that sits on the counters needs to get put up before you can deal with the real cleaning.

Wash Dirty Dishes
You need to wash any dishes you used. Either wash them by hand in hot water or rinse and then load the dishes into a dishwasher.

Wipe the Countertops
Use a sanitizing kitchen spray that will kill all germs and spray down the counters. Wipe them up with a clean cloth, paper towel or sponge.

Sweep the Floor
Your final task is to sweep the floor. All of the spills and crumbs you just wiped up are now on the floor. Sweep them up and possibly even mop to avoid getting uninvited guests in your kitchen.

Cooking Games – Homemade Pizza

Want to make something fun for dinner tonight? Try your hand at an authentic pizza – well, mostly authentic anyhow.

Gather Cooking Games Ingredients
To make pizza you’ll need the following:

• Pizza crust
• Roma tomatoes
• Mozzarella cheese
• Fresh basil

Making Homemade Pizza
This style of pizza is called margherita pizza in Italy and is usually found in small shops where you buy it by size. You simply gesture how big a piece you want and it is weighed to determine price.

To make it yourself, stretch out the pre-made pizza crust over a rectangular pan. I prefer the kind of crust that comes in a tube ready to use. Bake the pizza for about five minutes.

Slice your tomatoes very thinly or you can dice them if you prefer. Once you have the tomatoes ready, spread them into a thin layer on the pizza. Add a layer of fresh basil on top of the tomatoes.

Sprinkle the top of the pizza with a generous serving of mozzarella, bake and enjoy.

Cooking Games: Taking Cooking Classes

A great way to improve your skills in cooking games in the kitchen is to take cooking lessons. There are likely many children’s cooking lessons in your area if you scout them out. The cooking lessons for children focus on recipes that are easy enough for beginning cooks to create and also items that are appealing to kids.

To register for cooking classes, start by looking at your library and community center. Posters on the wall or signs in the teen book area of the library will likely clue you into offerings. You can also look around at churches to see what is offered through those as well.

In a cooking class, you learn how to handle the basics of food and food preparation in the kitchen. The teacher will show you how to measure, how to prepare dough, batter, or mixtures and then how to portion them out into various pans and baking sheets. The end result is always fun and at the end of the day you’ll have something yummy to take home and the experience to make it again.