Valentine’s Day is soon upon us. For those who plan ahead, the Food Network enlisted Amazon Alexa on Amazon Echo devices to help you find exactly the right dessert recipe to prepare and share with someone special.
The Food Network’s Date Your Dessert interactive game is quick, easy, and pays off every time in the form of a dessert recipe calculated to match your preferences. The gist of the game is you pick an ideal dessert based on clues about the dessert’s “personality.”
To get started, just say, “Alexa, ask Food Network to play Date Your Dessert.”
Alexa begins the game by introducing the three different sweets. For example, Contestant Number one, “Shows you a good time, but I’ve heard they’re a total heartbreaker.” You can ask for more clues or move on to receive clues about the next contestant. After you’ve heard about all three contestants, you are prompted to declare one of the contestants a match.
When you choose a contestant, Alexa tells you the recipe name, such as Broken Heart Chocolate Cake. Alexa offers to email you the recipe or lets you start over to choose another dessert. If you play the game on an Echo device with a screen, you can also view the ingredients, recipe directions, and a step-by-step cooking video for the dessert.
The emailed recipe comes complete with an ingredient shopping list. You can print the ingredients list as is, add the ingredients to a shopping list, or the skill will automatically add the ingredients to the online cart for the big chain grocery store closest to your location.
The Food Network, one of several Discovery brands, surveyed more than 2,000 adults in early February. One of their findings was that one in three of those surveyed who own a voice assistant use the assistant to find at least one recipe each week.
We spoke with Liesel Kipp, Senior Vice President of Product and Design at Discovery. According to Kipp, Discovery is enthusiastically adding apps for user engagement via voice assistants with the network’s brands including the Food Network. Viewers can connect with the Food Network on both Amazon Echo and Google Assistant with multiple apps for each.
For example, while Date Your Dessert is available for Amazon Echo devices only, you can command Google or Alexa to ask Food Network any of the following:
- …to spin the flavor wheel.”
- … for chicken Parmigiana recipes.”
- …for vegan mushroom recipes.”
- …What are some French toast recipes for brunch?”
- …for butternut squash lasagna recipe by Giada.”
- … for grilling recipes for lunch by Bobby?”
- …to give me recent recipes from The Pioneer Woman.”
- …to give me popular recipes from Alton Brown.”
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