Arkham Horror

Pew pew pew

How cool is that this game served as a gateway to the whole Cthulhu mythos thing for me? Pretty cool, I tell you. Coincidentally, it was one of the first modern, more complex board games that I've played and I fell in sort of love with it. It is a lot of fun and I accept almost every chance to play it. However, that's because the offers don't really come frequently.

Arkham Horror is a game of huge scope. It takes up a lot of space and you have to have a free day to play it (we rarely finished it under 6 hours) and it does require a lot of attention and a right mindset. New players are usually surprised by its ridiculously complicated rules and some casual players just can't get into the role-playing, story-telling aspect of the game and to be honest, without it, the game boggles down to a dice rolling frenzy, but more on that later. It just is not for everyone, but it's quite rewarding to those who enjoy Lovecraft's mythos and are not afraid to lose sanity to tentacles in shadows.

Cinnamon Tea Cake

I've stumbled upon this recipe one day when I was trying to find more ways to get spices into baked goods. After making batches of phenomenal Spicy oatmeal cookies with raisins, I wanted to put cinnamon into cakes. I tried some experimenting with cupcakes and strong flavours but I really found a gem in this simple cake. Tea cakes are not made from tea, as it may seem. They are usually enjoyed WITH a cup of afternoon tea, preferably one of slightly bitter taste. While the classification of tea cakes is pretty broad (in some regions, teacake is sort of a bread with dried fruit in it, in others it is not unlike a standard pound cake, somewhere even similar to cookies), they are sweet and tend not to be frosted.

White Chocolate Maple Muffins

Blessed is the day when I returned to my Muffin and cupcakes recipe book and had an oven to work with. I've just baked a batch of White Chocolate Maple Muffins for the weekend board game session I hold on our cottage. There's only 9, so that's enough for me, my brother and maybe my dad too.
I made these a year ago and my brother loved them, so I guess he'll like them even today.

White chocolate is not chocolate, it's actually only fat with sugar, so that's why it's so good. Its very sweet taste complements the bitterness of the walnuts here and since you don't use that much sugar in the dough anyway, it makes a pleasantly sweet product in the end. And what's surprising, the recipe asks for only one egg!

Music to bake to Vol. 2

Once again I turn to the music when I cannot bake. After the mild success when the last post was the most read post on my blog (at least before I started announcing posts on Reddit), I found myself thinking, as I was listening to some new music, that there are more songs to stimulate one's baking atmosphere. The lack of proper baking action in the past couple days made me bit anxious.

Unfortunately, my last.fm subscription for this month has failed so no radio as of last Monday. I gotta check not only my recent plays but my archives to come up with something mindblowing.

Chocolate Raspberry Friands

I was moving from Barcelona back to Prague and I couldn't bake anything and right now it's the middle of the week so I can't bake anyway (I'm on a diet) but since I'm finally home, I decided to post my favourite recipe for a cupcake. Well, it's not exactly a cupcake, it's a friand - an Australian and New Zelandian alternative to French financier, a small cake (according to wiki). This one is really really good, it's as easy as a cupcake but it has no frosting. Instead, you use raspberries to top the surface.

There's one thing about raspberries: they are delicious!

Especially with chocolate.