Mini mazance

After the last week's Easter holiday, I felt like I haven't baked a proper thing in a long long time. I mean, sure, muffins are great and everything, but I missed the challenge of the more advanced baked goods. As I looked for some inspiration on the internet (and all I got were fruit cakes), I remembered that I saw this cooking show on TV where they were making these tiny mazance. Mazanec (that's sg., pl. is mazance) is according to Wikipedia hot cross bun, the sweet bread that's eaten on Easter but I can imagine that being the only thing hot cross buns and mazanec have in common..

Mazanec has a cross on its top that is made with scissors, not frosting. It tends to be large, a loaf of bread large, while hot cross buns are... well... buns. The mazanec is traditionally made with raisins and almonds. As far as I know, there are no substitutes but I guess the raisins could be omitted if you for some reason don't like them.

Now, as I said, mazanec is normally much bigger. I guess this recipe could be used for one standard mazanec but mini mazance are so cute and everything's getting smaller and smaller nowadays anyway. These guys are fragrant, stay yummy for a long time and they are great with butter or simply on their own.

Apricot and ginger muffins

For my newest muffin experiment, I chose dried apricots to be the primary flavour. I also wanted to use biscuits somehow. I remember I used crushed biscuits for the bottom of the nanaimo bars once but muffins don't have bases really so I used the biscuits on the top. In the end it didn't have the effect I had had in my but it did give it a nice chocolate-y hint.

I used the ginger just because I found a root lying in my kitchen. Honey covered its sharp flavour, toned it down and it's almost unnoticeable in the final product, yet still there. I must say that I am very pleased with that outcome :3

Banana Chocolate Chip muffins

I bought 6 silicone muffin cases so that I might do some muffin baking at home in my remoska. Even though only 3 fit inside at a time, I made a small batch of six to test things out and hell yeah! It worked!
A new age has dawned upon my kitchen.

Anyway, I know I didn't discover America by combining banana and chocolate. This pair is bested only by chocolate and cherry combo (as many ice-cream companies have noticed) which is something I should combine in about two months when the season is right. But for now - banana and chocolate chip muffins.

A new game: Dungeon Petz

After some thought I decided to buy a new game. Vlaada Chvatil, the game designer behind the wonderful Galaxy Trucker and Through the ages, designed a spin-off game from his Dungeon Lords (which I hear was met with some mixed feelings) that tasks the player with managing a group of imps and breeding different monster pets.

I've played Dungeon Petz (Příšerky z podzemí in Czech) once so far and while the rules were a bit complex, I believe I understand about 90% of them and other sessions will go faster. The game is both a worker placement thing with some micro management. As you can tell from the box art, the game's graphics are lovely though the game board is slightly cluttered (though still keeping the graphics mostly functional).

After I play it some more, I'll write a post about it, as usual.
EDIT: Here's the post

Race for the Galaxy

I don't play many pure card games. The couple I've played can be counted on fingers of one hand. It's because I didn't see much originality in their core systems - you have cards in your hand, you use them and draw new ones. The games I own usually have cards as a side system - they either give you some kind of ability to work with the pieces on the board, work as items or actions in RPGs or add an extra layer of strategy (Loyang, LNoE, Agricola) but on their own, cards don't go further that a game of Crazy 8s, as in reacting to cards in a certain pattern, or Poker, as in working on your strategy while deceiving your opponents.

And then one day I played Dominion which did something original with the concept of cards - you were building your own deck of cards with cards that were immediately useful and cards that were useless but counted as points at the end. It was like the pre-game part of Magic: the Gathering you do at home being a part of the game itself. No wonder Dominion became such a hit. It did something, as far as I know, different with the whole deck-hand concept. Race for the Galaxy, while not turning the whole deck-hand thing upside down, achieves something similar. Something refreshing that makes it a very enjoyable game.