Cooking Games and Cookies

There are so many lovely types of cookies out there it’s hard to pick a favorite. But with the many varieties of cookies, one of the most delicious varieties has to be the frosted sugar cookie. Loaded with sugar and often covered with sprinkles of designs, the frosted sugar cookies are very special treats and are incredibly easy to make.

Start with a pack of sugar cookie dough – I prefer the preformed balls as they cook so uniformly, but other dough forms will do. Make the sugar cookies and then, while they are cooling, start mixing your icing. You’ll want at least two different colors of icing to complement each other – one can be vanilla and a bit of food coloring will make another shade for you.

Spread a thick layer of icing over the top of the first cookie and put it aside. Then frost another and so on, being sure to get a thick layer of frosting evenly over each. When you finish the last cookie, go back to the first and start decorating with your colored frosting. Make designs, circle each, draw pictures or anything that makes you smile – after all cookies should absolutely make you happy.

Cooking Games and Fresh Herbs

What better way to enhance your cooking games than by using fresh herbs right out of your own garden. If you’re not certain about growing your own plants or think you don’t have the space or the ability to do so, you’re wrong – growing your own plants is fun and easy. Once they get large enough, it’s even easier to include them in your food.

Start with some easy herbs that are fun to use like basil and parsley. These grow easily in containers or in a raised garden bed. Look for a starter kit in a nursery or home improvement store. Using the starter kit will give you the edge on growing if you’re not already familiar with how to plant the plants and care for them. Simply read the instructions, follow them and you’ll be in business.

Once the herbs are growing and thriving, you might branch out into other areas. Tomatoes and other small vegetables are common in backyard gardens and having your own produce is absolutely a fun way to teach kids or yourself about how to raise plants and care for them properly.

Cooking Games and Saint Patrick’s Day

There are so many different things you can do to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with cooking games. After all, Saint Patrick’s Day is all about the green, so if you focus on color in your food selections, you just can’t go wrong.

My personal favorite to make on this very green holiday is the green cake. You can make green cupcakes as well, of course, following the same recipe. Start with a box of cake mix in either vanilla or angel food. I prefer golden vanilla as it’s a richer taste, but it’s entirely up to you. Make the cake per the instructions on the box and then drop in a liberal dose of green food dye.

Mix well and bake the cake as you normally would. The end result is a bright green cake. Top off that green cake with vanilla icing dyed to a lovely shade of green as well and put some green sprinkles on top of the whole thing. It’s a green confection of pure deliciousness.

Cooking Games and Easter Eggs

It’s almost that time of year again for Easter eggs, and I am thrilled. I already have my dye cups ready to go and it’s just a matter of dropping in the colored tablets and filling the cups with water to create beautifully dyed Easter eggs.

The first step of dying Easter eggs is to boil raw eggs until they are hardboiled. Hardboiled eggs are less fragile than raw eggs and can take the handling that often accompanies the dye process. Once you have your eggs hardboiled, drop in the tablets of colors and get ready to start dying.

Use the special metal scoop to dip the eggs into the dye cups. The longer you leave the egg in the cup, the more dye will seep into the shell and the richer the final color will be. Pull out the egg and place it in a special hole in the box similar to an egg cup to dry. When dry, arrange your brightly colored Easter eggs in a special display basket and enjoy them!

Cooking Games and Pretzels

Pretzles are one of the most delicious ways to spread the holiday cheer. They start off so delicious with their salty goodness, but you can make them even more delicious by adding chocolate and toppings. Start with a bag of long pretzel sticks, chocolate melting drops in both dark and white chocolate and some gourmet toppings – crushed almonds, coconuts, tiny candies, sprinkles and mini chocolate chips are easy ones.

Put the toppings into quart sized bags and put them off to the side, careful to not let them spill. Then melt the first batch of melting dots in the microwave. When the dots are smooth and melted, dip the pretzel into the batch and then quickly dunk it into the bag of desired toppings. Shake the bag around a bit to coat the pretzel evenly and pull it out. Hold it for a minute to let it cool off enough to not be dripping or gooey and then place it carefully onto a wax paper sheet to dry completely. Package the pretzel sticks carefully and share them as the perfect gift for teachers and friends.