Cooking Games for Valentine’s Day

The best part of Valentine’s Day is finding something fun to make for your sweetheart. Your cooking games on this romantic holiday can be elaborate or simple. Make a full meal or just make a few cookies, but either way you’ll realize that baking is a great way to celebrate this month and share your joy with others, too. There are plenty of sweet treats that you can make for Valentine’s Day, but why stop there? You can do even more by making a full picnic! This is especially fun if you’re in school and have lunch together.

Your picnic can have sandwiches that you've made and some fruit you've cut up into a salad. Include some chips and dip and a bottle of lemonade and you've got quite a treat prepared for the two of you to share and enjoy. Then, for dessert, you can pull out the sweet treat that you've prepared and enjoy some brownies or perhaps a few cookies with pink sprinkles. After all, as we all know, it’s the thought that counts, and planning means you've put a lot of thought into your preparations!

Cooking Games and Soup

The weather is still a bit chilly, and that means it’s time to do some cooking. One of the best, and easiest, cooking games is creating a nice soup to enjoy at home. Cooking soup is often easier than you’d think since it involves just throwing a bunch of things into a big pot. For example take the contents of my pantry at this exact moment – I have chicken stock, potatoes, frozen chicken breasts and quite a few almost-too-old vegetables.

This is the perfect combination for a homemade vegetable soup. Start with the chicken stock and cut it down with water if it’s too salty for you. Then start slicing and dicing. Simply cut up all of your various vegetables into small pieces and toss them into the chicken stock. Since the cooking game wouldn't be complete without something of substance, defrost the chicken, grill it p and then chop it up into the soup if you’d like or toss in a handful of rice toward the end of the cook time to really make your cooking games fulfilling.

Cooking Games and Brownies

If there is any special treat that we all seem to enjoy universally, it has to be brownies. These rich, chocolate treats are ideal for so many occasions, and it helps that they are easy to make and simple to enjoy as well – you don’t even need to fork to make your way through the pan of brownies! That is both good and bad in a cooking game, of course, since eating too many decadent brownies can lead to more than a few extra calories.

The next time you get an urge for some chocolate, indulge your appetite with some brownies. And don’t just go for the regular ones. There are so many different flavors and types of brownies to try that you should never limit yourself by trying just the basic chocolate ones. Make your cooking games a chance to try the different brands and styles of the chewy treat. Make brownies with frosting, with nuts, with chocolate chunks and with swirls of caramel. The more you try the more you’ll realize that brownies are perhaps the very best dessert around.

Cooking Games for Potluck

The holidays bring a wave of potluck opportunities, and not all of them are easy to manage. If you’ve been asked to play some cooking games and whip up something delicious to bring to a potluck function, get a bit creative or stick to the basics, but don’t go overboard – this is supposed to be fun, remember?

Potatoes. You can’t go wrong with potatoes. People on all sorts of diets like to eat potatoes and you have plenty of choices as to how to prepare them. You can cut up new potatoes and season them before pan frying. Or create mashed potatoes with a bit of gravy on the side. They are easy to transport and everyone will love your cooking games.

Salad. A salad is another easy item to bring, and it has the added bonus of not being too hot to carry easily. Your salad should be a bit more than just a head of lettuce – try and make it more exciting than the basics, but bringing something green to a gathering shows a bit of balance in the cooking games as well.

Group Cooking Games

There are so many different opportunities to get together over the holiday season, so it's no wonder that there are endless parties that involve group activities for group cooking games. If you're thinking about throwing a party, consider the possibilities that come with a group cooking game.

Fondue Party - Find a recipe for fondue and then tearing up bread pieces and finding some fruit. You can have a fondue pot with cheese and perhaps a chocolate fountain to make it even tastier dessert from snack foods.

Cookie Party - Another easy cooking games party is to simply make a bunch of sugar cookies and then allow your guests to decorate them as they would like. They might decorate just the one cookie to eat now, or you can encourage them to decorate many more cookies and bring them home as a sort of party favor.

Pizza Party – Your cooking games don’t all have to be about sweets. You can easily have your guests create their own pizzas instead. Cook them up and then everyone can enjoy a bit of a hot meal on a cold day!

Cooking Games and Hot Chocolate

There is nothing that ushers in the Christmas season than a hot cup of hot chocolate or cocoa. Delicious, creamy and even decadent, hot chocolate can stand alone, but why would you want to make it live that way when there are so many other fun ways to enjoy the warm drink this Christmas season?

Stir in peppermint. Make you hot cocoa as usual and then rather than stirring with a spoon, use a soft peppermint stick to stir things up. The peppermint will melt into the hot chocolate and then you’ll have a delicious combination of chocolate and yummy peppermint – perfect for cold mornings.

Top it off! At the very least every cup of hot chocolate deserves to have a great topping. You can use a topping of marshmallows or whipped cream like they do in the movies. Or you can get a bit more creative and top your hot chocolate off with whipped cream and sprinkles or perhaps a bit of nutmeg to add some depth to the flavor.

Cooking Games and Pie

There is something about pie that simply sounds delicious. We’re not talking about the mathematical pi – who cares about math when there are chocolate, banana and lemon ice box pies around to enjoy? It’s hard to even imagine a Thanksgiving without a pie, so there is no surprise at all that cooking games with pies are especially popular this time of the year.

There are a few ways to make pies – my personal favorite is to simply buy a pie that someone else has already made for me. Then all I have to do is pop the pie in the oven and bake it. Or I might elect to buy an ice box pie – those cooking games are even easier. In that case all I have to do is take the pie out of the refrigerator.

Of course, the true experts of the cooking games are those who legitimately know how to create a pie from scratch. When you start with an apple and wind up with an apple pie – you are definitely getting the most out of the cooking games you’re playing.