Test your chops
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and into the living room. Cooking simulation video games recreate much of the culinary experience without the need to leave the house and shop for groceries and other things. We put several of the games through their paces to help you decide which ones are worthy of ending up under your tree.
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This game gives budding caterers a chance to see if they can handle the pressure of managing a food business. You take control of pastry whiz Jill Evans as she tries to meet the ever-increasing demands of her cake shop customers by baking and decorating cakes before they leave empty-handed. Again, you won't gain any practical cooking experience. Still, if you can handle the pressure, you just might have a career as a line cook.
The original cooking simulation game in which you use your Wii remote to chop vegetables, stir sauces and plate food with new challenges (chocolate chip cookies and California rolls) alongside returning entrees like miso soup. Featuring gobs of humor and two-player cooperative play, the game might not impart any real cooking knowledge, but it goes a long way to make actual cooking look fun. It might just inspire your young, budding chef to occasionally help out in the kitchen.
Take the chopping, mixing and dicing of Cooking Mama, add a time element and you have a good idea of what to expect with Supreme Cuisine. Unlike the show, once the secret ingredient is revealed you aren't left to come up with recipes. Instead, you select from several options and must have all dishes cooked and plated before time runs out. My only complaint? The computer-generated Alton Brown looks like he's wearing cornrows in his hair (or maybe that's just me).
Behold: the future of cookbooks in the palm of your hand. Nintendo's Personal Trainer: Cooking is like having a personal chef in your kitchen, guiding you every step of the way through 245 recipes featuring cuisine from around the world (one of my favorites was a seafood risotto). As you would expect from a Japanese developer, the emphasis is on Asian cuisine -- Asian entrees amount to about a third of all the recipes. The trainer is voice-activated, so you don't have to pull yourself away from the stove to have it repeat a step. You even can have the program put together a shopping list for you that, thanks to the portability of the handheld DS, you can take with you to the grocery store.
Half-interactive cookbook, half-cooking simulation game, What's Cooking? might not be enough of either to appeal to the gamer or the fan of everyone's favorite Naked Chef. Oliver has included some of his favorite recipes, which you could make in your own kitchen or within the game. Things could have been made truly informative had Oliver actually demonstrated certain techniques (that, and I had a harder time flipping virtual pancakes than I ever have in my own kitchen).