My daughters are terrifically huge fans of the Kung Fu Panda franchise, so when I saw the cookbook on the app marketplace, I thought “What the heck, I’ll give it a try”, and as it contained quite a few vegetarian recipes (which would likely be kid-friendly to make), it was worth a shot.
The cookbook is exactly as it is advertised. It’s a nice culmination of quite a few recipes (2 salads, 11 main dishes and 6 desserts) that are all encompassed in Dreamwork’s baby, Kung Fu Panda. I’d loved for there to have been a few more recipes, but I’m not disappointed.
When you open the app, you’re presented with a nicely supplied list view of all the recipes, simply sorted and displayed with thumbnails, as you can see below:
It does exactly what you want it to do, and you’re able to either click on the recipe of your choice, swipe to change the page or tap on the page edge. The swiping to change pages doesn’t work perfectly, but the other methods are just fine on their own.
Once you get into the recipe you want, the app really starts to shine. You’re presented with quite a few options with each recipe, which are easily accessible through a navigation bar that appears at the bottom whenever you’re in a recipe. The navigation bar is really nice, and although some of the options aren’t the most clear and require some trial and error to figure out, but once you get the hang of them, you’ll wish that every cookbook shared the same features.
From left to right, the options are:
- Converter – Scale the recipes for more servings, change from US to Metric.
- Social Sharing – Share to Facebook, Twitter or Email.
- Play/Stop – Will start or stop reading the recipe out loud.
- Record your own voice – Record whatever you want, tied to a that specific recipe (notes, read with adjustments, etc.)
- Timer – Allows you to set by hours/minutes/seconds (only works while the app is open)
- Bookmark – Flag your favorite recipes, the “flag” shows on the thumbnails from the main app.
- Home – Brings you back to the main page.
- Shopping List – Opens up a note-pad looking shopping list of exactly what is needed for each recipe.
- Info – A legend detailing what the other buttons do.
I’m sure some parents aren’t that comfortable with the social media being in apps designed for kids, and it’s worth noting that it’s not possible to remove this, so be aware of that.
That said, this bar makes me want anyone preparing to design or re-design a cookbook for the iPad look to this as a reference.
The simple act of having a “Shopping List” that integrates so seamlessly alone is very cool, and one of my favorite features. But the converter is something that’s definitely a huge benefit for me. It allows me to make food that I’ll get left-overs from, and it really works like gangbusters. The unit conversion is also a welcome change, as being in Canada means that a lot of things we buy do not get reflected in US units, and I hate wasting my time trying to convert, this saves me that headache.
I’m not sure how I feel on the option to record your own voice. I’d have much preferred to have an option to take down written notes here. First, I don’t like the sound of my own voice and, second, when working on a recipe I usually create 4 or 5 separate notes on separate aspects, which I could easily see and skim if written, but if taken vocally… well, it’s just more of a novelty that works fine with a kids book, but is out of place here.
The “Meat” of the App – How it all works
When you actually get into the recipes themselves, everything just works. The layout is clean and sufficient. It gives you exactly what you need. There are no adjustments to the text size, which I would really have liked, and it’s not possible to make personalized notes on the recipes, which I think should be a standard these days, but for a cook book, it does everything else it should.
Where it stands out, however, and why I think it deserves focus here are the videos on each of the recipes.
That’s right, almost every recipe contains a “how-to” video describing the process to putting the actual food together.
The videos are lead by an adult female and a boy (probably about 12 years old?). The female does 99% of the talking, while the boy nods and smiles for the camera. They’re both a little corny, and the way they’ve incorporated the Kung Fu Panda universe comes across equally corny, but you know what – For the kids, it works perfectly. And the videos themselves are very informative and clear. They were very well produced, with good direction that focuses on important aspects of what is being cooked. Most of them only focus on the more complicated aspect of the recipe (for example, the mouse recipe discusses how to separate an egg), and the rest is left to the written recipe on the page.
Simply put, they work. And I have to admit that I did find them helpful for my children, and a few for me. It’s nice to see certain kitchen aspects clearly explained through a video. It’s a great way to learn how to operate in the kitchen, especially for children. I learned a bit, and my daughters did as well. Having a younger child helps kids relate to someone.
Now, there are also Kung Fu Panda movie clips that replace 4 of the recipes. I wasn’t really prepared for these, but my daughters were quite happy. In some ways, I would have preferred these to be somewhere else, as the recipes would have benefited from the instruction videos, but I expected something like this and at least it was done in a nice, integrated way.
All of the videos play either in the windowed “picture-in-picture” mode, or full screen. They’re all in mostly HD quality, none look grainy.
So, that’s my explanation of the cookbook, I’ll move on to what is probably my most popular section, bullet points! 
What’s Great
- Sturdily designed with easy and clear navigation between recipes.
- An easy system to mark your favorite recipes, making it simple to get back to them at a later time.
- A navigation bar that seriously needs to be in every cookbook app out there, conversions that update the on-screen recipe? Generating a shopping list based on your scaled recipe? A simple, functional timer? Cookbook makers, take note!
- Cute videos that young kids will quickly take to, and that are actually informative, useful and smartly directed, focusing on techniques that might be difficult for children (or.. adults
). - Fantastic recipes. A good selections for vegetarians, and for the most part the options here are healthy and ones I’d be comfortable sharing with my family.
- Some of the recipes are directly tied into the movie (Dumplings, Shifu’s Noodles, Monkey’s Cookies).
- Having some Kung Fu Panda movie clips built in is a nice touch.
- Videos are all stored in-app, there’s no need to be connected to the internet at any point.
What Could be Better
- My first thing is to have a section for written notes/comments on the recipes. I understand the voice recording is a nice use of technology, but I’d rather have my own notes available to me.
- An option to disable social sharing. I don’t have a problem with this, as my children are still quite young, but I can appreciate parents wanting to have better control over this.
- While having the videos in the app is convenient, the app is simply massive (well over 300 megs) and if you happen to have a smaller iPad, it might be hard to make room for this large a cookbook with only 19 recipes.
- No multitasking. If you decide you want to switch out and check your email while in the app, you have to wait for it to reload when you come back in. Because it’s a large app, the load times are a bit lengthy, even on the iPad 2. We’re almost on iOS 5, multitasking should be on every app at this point.
- The Kung Fu Panda videos are all from the first movie. I understand the movie was just released, but movie studios license clips for their tie-in video games, why not for this? My daughters asked me why it wasn’t related to Kung Fu Panda 2 (as some of the recipes reflect the 2nd movie), and I just had to shrug.
| Review Overview | |
|---|---|
| Graphics |   |
| Clear layout, nicely designed but a bit on the boring side, versus some of the cookbook apps I've seen | |
| Sound | |
| For what is there, it's great. The videos sound clear, as do the voice reading of the recipes. | |
| Replay Value | |
| There are 19 recipes in total that come along with video instructions and vocal reading of each recipe. The recipes are actually really, really good - so you'll find yourself coming back to this even after your kids have moved on past Kung Fu Panda. | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| Average score from all categories. | |
My Summary
Kung Fu Panda Cookbook is something that took me a bit by surprise. I didn’t actually think it was going to be worthy of a review, but I’m happy to say that it’s not just a cheap tie-in that no one took the time with. Instead, it’s actually a well thought-out and planned cookbook that was put together with some real thought and planning. All of the instructional videos are done by decent cooks who also reference the movie. It’s a bit corny/cheesy but, honestly, for the market it’s aimed at, I don’t mind it at all. I got a good snicker at times where, say, they’re cracking an egg and as they do it, they count saying “1, 2, 3 SKIDOOSH!”.
It’s all in good fun, and it works to show that the makers didn’t just phone it in. Not at all. And as long as it stays reasonably priced (right now it’s currently $2.99), I’d say it is worth your money for the 19 recipes you’ll find inside. As far as it being “interactive” – well, no. There are no games, the movie cips (all from the 1st movie) are around 3 – 5 long, giving you about 15 minutes of “movie” in the cookbook.
So I say if you’re looking for a cookbook you can share with your kids that ties into what is the biggest kids movie of the summer, look no further. Heck, if you’re looking for a good cookbook that has some really easy and awesome recipes in it, look no further than this. It’s very well done, and I’ve actually found quite a few recipes I’ve put in my permanent rotation, something well worth more than $3. Kung Fu Panda Cookbook – Proving that not all tie-ins suck!
Kung Fu Panda Interactive Cookbook for the iPad. Price: $2.99
iTunes Link – iPad ONLY
**Tested on a 2nd Generation iPad WiFi model.**NOTE – This is for the iPad ONLY! This will not work on the iPhone. It is NOT universal so please, please do not go in expecting this to work on your iPhone or iPod touch.
