Five great cooking apps for Christmas

Christmas can take months of preparation, from the endless weeks of shopping for gifts, to the pre-ordering of the turkey and stocking up the fridge.

The dinner itself can be a mammoth task and every extra helping hand is a bonus, even if that hand comes in the form of an app. Here are five great cooking apps to help make the biggest meal of the year, and all the ones around it, brilliant.

Great British Chefs Kids Christmas - Free - iOS

Tesco and great British chefs have teamed up to create the Great British Chefs Kids Christmas app designed to encourage children to help with the cooking.

It comes with 75 recipes created by some of the country's finest chefs including Marcus Wareing, and a further 30 will be added at the beginning of December.

Each recipe has been created to be easy to understand, explained with clear steps and highlights where kids can get involved,  plus it has child-friendly videos to help. The recipes include healthy meals, savoury and sweet, as well as vegetarian.

Christmas recipes - Free - Android

If you have family or friends coming to stay over the holidays, it's unlikely that Christmas dinner will be the only meal you cook for them. You will probably need a few ideas up your sleeve and the Christmas recipes app is perfect for when you are stuck.

It features recipe ideas for first courses, main courses and desserts, each of which has an image, ingredients and steps to ensure you complete the dish without any disasters.

New updates are delivered regularly to increase the number of recipes, but if you fancy roast pig, glazed ham with apricots or even chicken with lobster, it's a good one to have handy.

Party Food Recipes - Free - Android

The Christmas season is often referred to as party season, whether it is work events or visitors, and therefore having an app for party food tips will always be useful.

The Party Food Recipes app features 25 videos on, as the name suggests, party food recipes. Theses include sausage rolls, cheese balls, party caramel-coated popcorn, a party treats guide and party appetisers.

In addition, you'll find a video on savoury vs. sweet Christmas party food, Nigella Lawson's party food ideas and a trio of sweet treat finger foods so you are bound to find something that tickles your taste buds.

Christmas Menu Maker - Free - iOS

The Christmas Menu Maker app from Fine Cooking is a brilliant app for getting organised. It allows you to build the menu you want to serve on Christmas Day, or whenever else you fancy, and it will create a shopping list and schedule for you.

The app features classic Christmas recipes that we have all come to know and love including baked ham, roast turkey and baked pastas, allowing you to customise it based on your family's preferences.

Recipes are divided into four courses and you’ll find everything from easy-peasy dishes to Masterchef-style dinners, all of which you can explore without internet access.

Good Food - Android & iOS - Free

BBC's Good Food app will give you recipes, tips and cooking tools and is free to download, but you will have to pay for additional curated cookbooks.

You will get 20 recipes including beef and beer pie, 50 glossary terms of ingredients and techniques in case you aren't quite sure what something means, tips and a multiple timer tool before you spend a penny.

The curated cookbooks available include healthy, quick, seasonal, festive and others, which are all available to buy through the app and all the recipes come with nutritional information.