Thanksgiving Soup recipe.

We need:
3 cups chicken broth
½ cups orange juice
4 carrots
1 medium onion
2 boxes frozen butternut squash puree
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
some nutmeg
some salt and pepper

Heat a soup pot over medium-high heat. Add extra-virgin olive oil and butter. When butter has melted, add the onion and carrots and cook until vegetables are soft, about 5 min. Season with salt and pepper. Deglaze with the orange juice and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon.

Transfer the mixture to a food processor or a blender. Puree the mixture until smooth, then return to pot over medium heat. To mixture, add the frozen butternut squash puree and the chicken broth and stir to combine. Adjust the seasoning. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and let simmer for 10 min. Grate some fresh nutmeg and stir to combine.

Ladle Thanksgiving soup into bowls and garnish with chopped thyme and orange zest.

Another release in the Dash series is available now for the fans of the genre and of the Diner Dash games.

Cooking Dash: Diner Town Studios is developed by Aliasworlds and published by PlayFirst and gets you to do a very familiar thing – serve the clients as quick as you can.

The game offers you to play in one of the two modes: Story mode or Endless mode.

The story mode features 50 levels with 5 different locations, while the endless mode allows you to try your best in any level with three difficulty levels: easy, medium or hard.

You can expect to meet such characters as Bookworms, Cellphone Addicts, Kindly Seniors or Students. In addition to those you will also meet customers like the Director, the Celebrity and the Starlet.

Those who are familiar with the Cooking Dash game series remember that knowing the character special features helps to reach the goal and makes playing more successful. Considering each type features enables you to seat them wisely to earn more points. What else will give you more points is seating them according to their outfit color. Another way of earning some extra points (and I should say huge points) is chaining similar actions. So, take advantage of these tips.

To earn additional points, use the available upgrades which you are to choose before each level. Those can be fuctional or decorative. No mater which of them you choose, they help to boost the score.

Even though the Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios game is full of things to make it easier for you it will still keep you on your toes. It is really fast-paced just as one would expect it to be. The audio-visuals are enjoyable and bright as well as the characters are funny and adorable.

Review from GameMile

Time Management gamers will be most interested in My Kingdom for the Princess. This is a fantastic game. The premise is all about your kingdom that has been severely damaged by a tornado. As Princess Helen, you need to get back to the king, but the roads are torn apart and dragons fill the sky above. So what’s a girl to do? How about rebuilding the entire kingdom into a thriving empire. The graphics are fantastic and the game play is even better.

We introduced some features within DinerTown Tycoon that are new to the genre. For example, the game focuses on menu management. This involves looking at taste and price trends and adjusting your menu accordingly so that you are serving the most desired dishes or dishes with inexpensive ingredients. You’re also competing directly against Grub Burger, so you have to make strategic business decisions to beat them.

Another innovation is the Daily Chef Challenge, which is a daily activity that can give you a leg up on the competition. This optional task varies in scope and difficulty, but once a player achieves the Daily Chef Challenge, she or he will knock down Grub Burger’s progress and gain more time to win over the residents of DinerTown. When you’re playing DinerTown Tycoon, you’re racing against Grub Burger to see who can serve the most customers first. Any customers that the player loses will go to eat at Grub Burger. Grub Burger has a big meter that is constantly filling up, and when they get to the top, they’ll take over the neighborhood completely.

The featured newspapers in the game also offer Daily Chef Challenges. Examples include selling 10 meals to a particular customer type, making $500, buying a décor upgrade, buying a new recipe, preventing unhappy customers, etc. If the player is able to fulfill their goal that same day, Grub Burger’s progress gets knocked back at the end of the day. This can buy the player a little bit of extra time.

My favorite part of the game? There are so many! I love competing against Grub Burger and seeing it quiver in its cocoon when I beat it! I like knowing what kinds of food each DinerToon likes to eat, and I love the satisfaction of completing a Daily Chef Challenge and seeing Grub Burger’s progress hampered.

Review by Ophelea

Passport To Perfume takes you around the world as Sophia, a young adventure-seeker, perfume maker and shop owner in the 1940’s. You’ll manage a perfume shop, create scents, select from elegant perfume bottle inventory and sell your creations to customers. On weekends, travel the world searching for rare ingredients, perfume bottles and new fragrance recipes. Will you find rarest of all—a secret fragrance worn by Marie Antoinette herself? Or will a rival perfumer find it first?

• 48 ingredients to mix and match
• 5 exotic hidden object locations
• 16 elegant perfume bottles

Old fashioned bakeries are so outdated…these days, you need a bit of originality and a whole lot of food coloring to make things more interesting. At least that’s the premise of Jessica’s Cupcake Cafe, a hectic time management game that feels a lot like Cake Mania, but has you making some very unusual cupcakes instead of cake.

Aunt Margaret is feeling the drag on the economy, and her old fashioned bakery just isn’t turning profits anymore. Her visiting niece Jessica suggests they do the modern thing and start making cupcakes instead. With that, Aunt Margaret puts Jessica in charge, and the cupcake cafe is open for business.

As you play, you unlock easy recipes to actually make the cupcakes in the game. They look edible; that is, if the thought of carrot cupcakes with bright blueberry frosting doesn’t completely gross you out. I’m pretty adventurous in the kitchen, but even I wouldn’t pair cream cheese frosting with green tea flavored cupcakes…and as I mentioned before, these recipes are not afraid to be liberal with food coloring. Lavender frosting, made with real lavender? I don’t know…I think I’ll pass on testing these out, but they’re in the game if you’re braver than I am.

But, back to the gameplay. As you play, you need to bake cupcakes to fill customers’ orders. Cupcakes are baked in batches, so instead of preparing individual orders, you are first prompted on the day’s style. If you prefer, you can change the design of cupcakes you are baking before the round begins, so if you’ve got a thing for chocolate frosting you can go ahead and put it on everything. It also means you can design more expensive cupcakes.

Once the day has begun, you need to prepare the batter, bake the cupcakes, frost them, and add cute toppers. You won’t be allowed to make any mistakes when frosting, and will be prompted with a red X if you attempt to make an order that’s not on the agenda. If you’ve make the wrong choice, you can discard the cupcakes and frosting in the garbage.

After you’ve made enough cupcakes, you bring the tray over to serve customers, and collect the cash at the register. The happier the customer, the more money you earn. In addition to cupcakes, customers may request side items like tea, coffee, hot chocolate, milk, or water. Sometimes, a customer will come in with a special order for a dozen custom designed cupcakes, which earns you more cash. You want to keep customers happy by serving them quickly. You can increase a customer’s patience with candy, or by turning the TV to a channel that matches the color of their shirt. Like in real life, some people are more patient than others, and some will give you better tips.

In a cool twist, you can earn power-ups by serving customers displaying the power up icons. These power ups include gears to increase the speed of your machines, shoes to boost Jessica’s speed, hearts to boost customer patience, coins to double your sales, and cupcakes to add 12 bonus cupcakes to your tray. Very useful, indeed.

You can buy upgrades for your equipment, but these are pretty expensive, so you need to really earn them. You can also replay levels again in the map screen to earn a better score. Before you advance to a new scene, you can sell surplus cupcakes at the park. This is an easy mini-game where you fill customer’s orders by giving them different types of pre-made cupcakes.

There are eight unique shops and 64 levels, including sites like the mall, airport, and pier. If you want a game that lasts, the length here is pretty good, taking at least six hours to beat, and that’s not counting replay value if you aim for an expert score. The game features an impressive soundtrack. The music really sets up the atmosphere, and is genuinely enjoyable. The graphics are also really cute, done in 2D cartoon style.

The pace can get pretty hectic, even if you play a lot of time management games. However, this is part of the fun, and luckily the customers are pretty patient. It’s quite challenging if you aim for an expert score, but it’s just the right pace if you just want to advance to the next level.

As for criticism, there isn’t much to complain about. It’s pretty important to follow instructions, and not to jump ahead while playing the tutorial (unless you plan to skip it). Otherwise, things don’t turn out well, and you’ll end up being forced to toss out cupcakes. Other than that, it’s fair to say it’s not too original, since there are a bunch of baking-themed games out there, and it doesn’t add too much to the genre.

Fans of time management games, particularly the Cake Mania games, will still find plenty to like. With lots of opportunities to form strategies and use power-ups, it’s a good challenge, and the theme is comfortable and familiar.

Review by Lisa Haasbroek

Wandering Willows, the newest release from PlayFirst, is a delightful and unique adventure that sends you on a journey to whimsical lands of magical creatures and zany new friends. You and your trusty new pet will do everything from digging holes to dealing with Alien aircraft while charming your way into the hearts of everyone finally finding your way home.

Wandering Willows is a simulation-style game (think the MySims series) that focuses on friendship and doing things for others while helping yourself. After a bird tears a hole in your hot air balloon you find yourself stranded on a beautiful island inhabited by people who are so happy there they never want to leave. You do want to go home, though, and to do so you are going to need help and good friends to get you there.

An adorable pet adopts you and never leaves your side, becoming instrumental in your completion of the game. Everyone wants to barter with you, so you set off to explore the island and complete 162 quests, from finding items to making complex gadgets to repair your balloon.

You’ll begin by customizing your avatar, where you can customize everything from gender to skin tone. You find yourself in “Grassland town” where you meet ten of the island’s hilarious inhabitants, each of whom has unique personalities, likes and dislikes. For example, there’s Art Gunderson, the elderly farmer that loves raisins and wearing ball gowns; and Debbie Katz, prim and proper librarian type that adores flowers and trendy clothing and several others.

You will have conversations throughout the game to find out what people need, and can click to read the dialogue and refer to the top of the screen for the “to do” list to keep track of your quests. Once you learn your quest, (which can consist of things such as making food, clothing, flower arrangement or gadgets) you and your pet will travel on foot looking for items and bring them back once found. You may need to find patterns to make someone a costume, or you may have to bake someone’s favorite bread.

Each time you satisfy someone you become more popular with that person. You start out as an “acquaintance” and work your way up to “Best Friend.” While searching for items you will dig up things such as onions and oil, climb trees for fruits and nuts, and charm other animals for items ranging from wool to diamonds. You will also have to grow some items in the garden and purchase others from the store.

The town’s currency is known as “Willobees” and can be earned by selling items at one of three stores: the Sewing store, Flower store and Cooking store. These items can be picked up by you, but must be obtained for you by your pet by either digging, climbing, or charming another animal into giving it up.

You have an inventory list and a notebook that keeps track of all recipes, patterns and floral arrangements. There are more than 40 animals and each has different strengths and weaknesses you can use to your advantage, such as the “Torzil,” a strong climber and weak charmer, or the “Gruffie” a strong charmer and weak digger.

Animals can be charmed into giving up eggs which can be placed to incubate and if needed, you can trade your pet to meet your goals faster. Collars can be made to increase each pet’s abilities.

Once you have completed the majority of quests in “Grassland town” you will be introduced to “Tropics Town” where you will meet six more adorable characters and continue to search for recipes, patterns and other items.

To win the game you must complete 162 quests, including the nine necessary tasks to fix the balloon and return home (such as patch basket hole, reattach balloon, acquire CB radio). After the game has ended, a screen appears giving you the option to quit or to continue playing in order to earn the twelve available medals in the games trophy area. A few of the medals consist of meeting goals outside of patching the balloon such as earning 100,000 “Willobees” will win you the “Entrepreneur” award and obtaining “Best friend” status with every island resident will win you the “Social Butterfly” medal. Once completed, these medals can be submitted to Playfirst.com along with your high score.

Some people may find all the repetitive clicking and long term searching frustrating, but ultimately that is what makes the game challenging and rewarding by finding all of the well-hidden objects. One of the most challenging aspects of the game is collecting all of the pet eggs, which must be charmed from other animals. It can take over ten tries before an animal will give an egg.

Unique game play, beautiful artwork, and a funny storyline with colorful characters will prove Wandering Willows a winner among adventure and sim game fans young and old. This game offers a challenge without the pressure of time constraints, and since it will likely take you at least 20 hours to complete all the quests, it’s a great value for the price.

Easter Baskets and Bunnies Cupcakes recipe.

We need:
1.75 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of milk
0.75 cups of HERSHEY’S Cocoa
0.5 cups of vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1.5 teaspoons of baking soda
1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
2 eggs
some salt

Heat oven to 350°F. Line muffin cups with paper bake cups.

In large bowl, stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of electric mixer 2 min. Stir in boiling water. Fill muffin cups 0.66 full with batter.

Bake 25 min. or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely. Prepare CREAMY VANILLA FROSTING; frost cupcakes. Immediately press desired color tinted coconut onto each cupcake. Garnish as desired to resemble Easter basket or bunny.

St. Valentine’s Breakfast Biscuits

We need:
1.5 cups of flour
0.7 cup of sugar
0.5 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
0.5 cup of milk
10 tablespoons of unsalted butter (melted and kept hot)
1 teaspoon of baking soda
some salt
a heart shaped cutter

In a bowl mix the flour, baking soda, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl mix the hot butter and cocoa powder until smooth. Stir the egg and milk into the chocolate mixture. Pour the wet mixture over flour mixture. Fold through gently with a rubber spatula until all of flour mixture is moistened. Do not try to make a smooth dough. Place the dough on sheet of wax paper and push into a rectangle of approximately 10×5 inch.
Chill the dough for about 15 min.
Cut out as many shapes as you can from the dough. Transfer them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 400 F on the center shelf for about 12 min., or until the tops have dried and started to crack and the bases have started to color. A St. Valentine’s dish is ready.