Little Cook

Confession time. I’m not one of those moms who loves to have their kids in the kitchen with them. My kitchen is small and my view of cooking is one of survival. I do it so the family survives not because I really enjoy it. I want to be one of those fun moms with fun recipes but I’m just not. My husband on the other hand enjoys cooking with the kids. So at least one parent is making sure they’ll go off to college knowing how to do something other than pop microwave popcorn. Why am I airing this default in my character? Because guess what – there’s an app that can give my kids a cooking experience without involving my kitchen. It’s called Little Cook and while it won’t actually teach them how to operate an oven or read a recipe it does let them “cook” without grumpy mom.

Here’s how it works. You choose a dish from the kitchen (ice cream, sandwich, soup, omelet, pizza or salad) and then add your own ingredients. You’ll see the ingredients on the screen and you can scroll through them using arrows or by swiping your finger. When you find something that you want to add just drag it into the dish. Go ahead and add whatever you feel like, there are no rules. As you add ingredients they show up at the top of the screen. If you feel like swapping something out just drag the ingredient from this row and it’ll disappear.  Now when you’ve achieved culinary perfection you tap on the check mark and the app’s taste tester gives it a try. She’ll let you know how your dish turned out and whether she enjoyed it or not.

My kids have been enjoying Little Cook and it’s fun to see what they think belongs in a salad. Here’s a hint, it’s nothing green. I’m not sure if any updates are planned for the app but it’d be fun to see more dishes added later on. For now though there are enough different ingredients and combinations to keep all the little cooks with iPhones happy.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Aqility