Our two year-old has just got into saucepans. Literally, sometimes: he puts a big one on the floor, steps into it and then jumps out onto the nearest rug, beanbag or brother. But he also enjoys pouring his bag of plastic vegetables in and pretending to cook.

No wonder he loves Toca Kitchen. It’s the latest release from Swedish developer Toca Boca, whose apps have kept children around the world captivated in 2011.

In this one, you’re cooking food for four characters: a man, a woman, a cat and something we thought was a horse until we re-read the app description and found it was a bull. Something snorty, anyway.

It’s as simple to grasp as previous Toca Boca apps. Your child chooses an ingredient from the fridge on the left of the screen - including sausage, potato, broccoli, fish, egg and tomato - and then cooks or prepares it with one of the implements found on the right.

They include a boiling saucepan, a microwave, a food processor, a chopping board and a frying pan. Several of these can be used, such as chopping up a potato before frying it. Once cooked, you serve the food to the character by dragging it to their mouth. Their reaction tells you if they like it or not.

That’s it: Toca Boca says this is very much a toy rather than a game. Our kids both love it, and will happily play with the different ingredients for the entire 10-15 minutes of the daily iPad time we give them.

It’s social too: when our four year-old plays, the two year-old sits next to him commentating: “He likes that!” “Oh no! He doesn’t like that!” Intriguingly, the app also makes our youngest want to go and get his saucepan afterwards and mix up his plastic veg: the iPad is sparking his physical play, not replacing it.

At £1.49 for a universal app that runs across iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, this is excellent value. We can’t recommend it highly enough.