Baking
A couple of months ago I started playing this new Facebook game called Baking Life. It basically simulates a bakery, where you can choose your furniture and decorate the place, etc., and you have various recipes that you can bake. Each recipe takes a certain amount of time to bake (anywhere from 4 minutes to two days), costs a certain amount for ingredients, produces a certain number of servings each of which gains you a certain amount of profit; and each recipe gives you a certain number of "experience points" (xp) the accumulation of which helps you to level up.
So there are two basic aspects of the gameplay: one is arranging your furniture and cash registers such that customers can easily get what they want; the other is planning your baking so that you always have stuff ready to sell and more stuff baking. If a customer has to wait too long to get his/her items, he/she gets mad and leaves, and your "hype" score goes down. A higher "hype" means more customers coming in which in turn means that you need to add more cash registers, which results in more customers and longer lines, etc....So it's like real life in that sense; "hype" is a double-edged sword.
Anyway, I probably would have stopped playing the game by now (once you get to the maximum hype level it starts to get less interesting) but the kids love it so I'm still playing it a bit. Ruthie loves to watch the little animated people moving around in the bakery, and she likes the music and sound effects. Isaac likes to click the items when they've finished baking, to move them into the display cases, and put new items into the ovens.
It's fairly dumb really, and I've been slowly trying to discourage them from it and hoping they'll lose interest. BUT, I must add that it has caused Isaac to become interested in some new baked goods! He first got interested in baklava, which, in the game, is a good recipe to make because it produces a good profit. Isaac decided that he wanted to taste baklava, so we went to a Greek restaurant and got him some. He didn't like it, but hey, at least he tried it.
Then we started pretend-baking a lot of pecan pie in the game, so Isaac said that he wanted to try pecan pie. Well, I LOVE pecan pie so I was all for it ;) but I definitely didn't want to get an entire pie because if he didn't like it then I'd be stuck eating the whole thing. ;) But this past weekend we were at Whole Foods and I noticed that their bakery had mini pecan pies (pecan tarts, they called it) for only $5. So we got one of those and tried it. Ruthie refused to try the pecan part (insert massive eyeroll here) so I gave her a piece with just crust and filling, which of course she loved. Isaac ate the whole thing and seemed to like it pretty well. I, of course, thought it was delicious. ;)
So, it remains to be seen which recipe from the game we'll have to try next. I hope it isn't carrot cake, because I don't like that at all. Could be apple pie, raspberry cheesecake, tiramisu,...lots of choices!
In "real" baking news, I've gotten back into baking bread, after having stopped doing it over the summer. I'm enjoying it. And the bread I make tastes soooo much better than anything we buy! yum!
So there are two basic aspects of the gameplay: one is arranging your furniture and cash registers such that customers can easily get what they want; the other is planning your baking so that you always have stuff ready to sell and more stuff baking. If a customer has to wait too long to get his/her items, he/she gets mad and leaves, and your "hype" score goes down. A higher "hype" means more customers coming in which in turn means that you need to add more cash registers, which results in more customers and longer lines, etc....So it's like real life in that sense; "hype" is a double-edged sword.
Anyway, I probably would have stopped playing the game by now (once you get to the maximum hype level it starts to get less interesting) but the kids love it so I'm still playing it a bit. Ruthie loves to watch the little animated people moving around in the bakery, and she likes the music and sound effects. Isaac likes to click the items when they've finished baking, to move them into the display cases, and put new items into the ovens.
It's fairly dumb really, and I've been slowly trying to discourage them from it and hoping they'll lose interest. BUT, I must add that it has caused Isaac to become interested in some new baked goods! He first got interested in baklava, which, in the game, is a good recipe to make because it produces a good profit. Isaac decided that he wanted to taste baklava, so we went to a Greek restaurant and got him some. He didn't like it, but hey, at least he tried it.
Then we started pretend-baking a lot of pecan pie in the game, so Isaac said that he wanted to try pecan pie. Well, I LOVE pecan pie so I was all for it ;) but I definitely didn't want to get an entire pie because if he didn't like it then I'd be stuck eating the whole thing. ;) But this past weekend we were at Whole Foods and I noticed that their bakery had mini pecan pies (pecan tarts, they called it) for only $5. So we got one of those and tried it. Ruthie refused to try the pecan part (insert massive eyeroll here) so I gave her a piece with just crust and filling, which of course she loved. Isaac ate the whole thing and seemed to like it pretty well. I, of course, thought it was delicious. ;)
So, it remains to be seen which recipe from the game we'll have to try next. I hope it isn't carrot cake, because I don't like that at all. Could be apple pie, raspberry cheesecake, tiramisu,...lots of choices!
In "real" baking news, I've gotten back into baking bread, after having stopped doing it over the summer. I'm enjoying it. And the bread I make tastes soooo much better than anything we buy! yum!