My daughter turned 26 last week and she requested a Chopped birthday party. If you’re not familiar, Chopped is a cooking competition on the Food Network. She wanted to reproduce the show in a party format so we stocked the kitchen with food, organized utensils and invited lots of friends to cook, judge, cheer and clean-up (having a large clean-up crew is essential for this party). To simplify the cooking process, we decided to have two rounds instead of three, an entree and a dessert round, with three chefs competing in both rounds (we did not chop a chef choosing to use a scoring system instead).

The star chefs, Christine, Kevin and my daughter, Megan.

Waiting for the unveiling of the entree basket ingredients.

Chef’s deciding what to do with the entree ingredients: meatloaf mix, apricot preserves, acorn squash and frozen waffles.

Chefs and sous chefs in action.

The presentation of the entrée round to the judges. Burgers with waffle crunch served over a puree of acorn squash and apricot preserves; acorn squash spaghetti and meatballs with apricot glaze; and meatloaf sliders with crispy waffles strips.

Chefs move on to the dessert round. Basket ingredients included dragon fruit, coconut water, Captain Crunch cereal and silken tofu.

The dessert presentation to the judges. Coconut bread pudding with vanilla tofu cream and dragon fruit raspberry salad; dragon fruit shooter with a bruleed Captain Crunch topping; and dragon fruit, mint and raspberry cream over a homemade pastry shell.

It was an exciting night of cooking with all three chefs creating innovative, delicious recipes in under 35 minutes per round. The competition was fierce but friendly with the birthday girl pulling out a victory after serving the judges her luscious bread pudding with homemade whipped cream.