Host a fun Cooking Challenge party for the kids in your family! They will love you forever if they can play in your kitchen for an evening!
This Christmas we chose to give our nieces and nephew more than just a wrapped present! We agreed on giving them a memory they could cherish forever. So how could I resist throwing a party! Since I haven’t planned a party in a while I was excited to start planning something special. After much thought this is what My hubby and I came up with and I think they really loved it! I’m hoping this party was definitely more enjoyable than a single wrapped present!
Top Chef Cooking Challenge Party
Maloy Edition!
I must first give credit to Sophie’s World.blogspot .com. She planned a cooking challenge party that helped me get my party off to a great start, since I don’t watch many cooking challenge shows like Master Chef, Iron Chef or Chopped. There are many cooking parties out there but many are pizza, pasta or cookie decorating parties.
I wanted a real COOKING party, one where they could get their culinary thinking caps on and play in the kitchen with REAL ingredients and have a REAL experience!
INVITE
I have to say the invite for a party makes me happy and I hope it does the same for my guests!
I used cardboard to cut out a cutting board design and used paper to make that special Top Chef knife and recipe card (the party info!)
Our kids love cooking and they love helping out when they can.
I started out with making aprons for everyone. With a few pair of old jeans I took to Pinterest and found some great ideas on upcycling my old jeans into aprons and hot pads! An easy project that would fit my party theme perfectly!
Every Chef needs a hat in the kitchen, so with some posterboard and tissue paper I was able to whip these up quick!
Now I probably didn’t need to set the table and add all the extra décor but I’m a Gala Gal and it makes me happy, REAl happy!
I simply used all my kitchen gadgets to decorate my table, no extra fancy purchases!
I also recycled a few cans to hold some utensils and make them visible and ready for use for all my chefs.
I made sure everyone team had a cutting board and I made sure they knew where their prepping table was with this fun and simple place setting. Yes, it’s just a fork in a mini jar filled with sugar to hold their Team name tag!
READY, SET, COOK!
No matter the age they were all super excited to get started, especially this one, she loves her cousins!
Here is how my party worked!
I set a schedule so we could time each category and make it fair for everyone.
When everyone arrived we let them pick out of a bowl their team names. Each team was given an adult to monitor and help with chopping, whisking, cooking….but that was it. No suggestions were allowed. We started with basic kitchen rules. I just wanted to make sure no one cut off fingers or burned the house down!
BOX OF GOODIES
Each team was given the same ingredients. We had a total of 11 items and the rule was you had to use all the items except one if you chose not too! Here is a list we put together:
Chicken, Bacon, Egg, Potatoes, Carrots, Peas, Shredded Cheese, Mushrooms, Onion, Garlic, French Bread
We also set out as many spices, seasonings, sauces and oils the kids could choose from!
PLANNING MENU TIME
Everyone was given 15 minutes to plan their menu. We gave them a planning sheet to help them organize their thoughts! They had to plan an Appetizer, Side Dish and Main!
COOKING BEGINS!
Look at these savvy Top Chef’s!
We gave our chef’s 1 hour to cook! When planning this party I honestly only really thought about how cute it would look, ha, ha! Right before the kids arrived I started thinking about how it would all work, meaning space in the kitchen, having enough kitchen gadgets, chaos….oh well I thought, we will just have to see what happens!
These Chef’s were definetly kitchen savvy! We had no problems at all, just the obvious nerves and scramble for all those last minute things when the time was closing in!
It was exciting to watch….especially these two kids, I mean adults!
If there was any cheating going on Sonny knew and he was most definitely Heidi was giving hints! Hilarious but pure family fun!
CHEF’S ON A MISSION
I love this picture of my niece Isabelle. It reminds me of what a beautiful young lady she is becoming and how old I’m getting!
We had three teams and since we decide on using farm ingredients our theme was ‘Down on the Farm, an idea from an episode from the Iron Chef series, so of course we needed Funny team names!
TEAM T-BONE!
TEAM PORKY!
TEAM CLUCK CLUCK!
Ha, Ha I guess I should have adjusted the Chef hats but when your on a time limit…it is what it is! It didn’t hold back this Team!
PRIZES!
We decided that a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prize would be too complicated. We were right! Each team made a fabulous dish, taste and presentation were amazing, so judging was super hard!
Take a look at these plates the teams prepared!
Fancy and lots of creative detail, right! And these are just kids!!!
Give them a box and they can create amazing things!
And the winners are……
We had an awesome evening getting creative in the kitchen! The kids loved it and we’ve decided that the adults need a cooking challenge party of their own! I hope we can motivate you to cook up your own fun cooking challenge! I swear it will be so much fun! It was definitely for us!
Happy Cooking!
thegalagals 