Apricots Stuffed with Marzipan and Covered in Chocolate

Since it is past the whole Christmas thing, I can now reveal something that I prepared as a Christmas present for my brother and his girlfriend. The last time I made something covered in chocolate was in January and I completely forgot that it was actually pretty easy. I wanted the present to be quite different from the classic Christmas cookies and feel like something better than just chocolate covered fruit.

Taking the recipe from Delicious Gifts by Jess McCloskey that I got last year, I knew that the extra marzipan and cognac will make my present special. I didn't know though that the result of such a simple recipe would make a deliciously chewy chocolate treat that will put any store bought box of chocolates to shame.

In the end, they were a great success. Their only flaw was that they disappeared too quickly and that there was only 20 of them but since they are so easy to make, I might just make some more in a very near future :)

Pistacio-lingonberry Sugar Cookies

The Winter is Coming.

It's been coming for some time and I hear there will be dragons. In any case, it meas that Christmas is coming too and there is a need for Christmas cookies at such time. I liked the mince pies I made last year so I will be making those again but I wanted to bake something easy as well. Sugar cookies are practically the easiest type of cookies but for the special occasion I wanted them special too. Using a lot of pistacio nuts and dried lingonberries made the plain chewy cookies special and added great mix of flavor to the usually plain sweetness of sugar cookies.

Assassin's Cake IV: Caribbean Carrot Cake

One of the things that working for a video game site is great for is that I get in contact with a LOT of video game information. Like this one time, I was writing an article about a new developer's video on Assassin's Creed 4 and I was stunned by how beautiful and well-thought the game seemed. I am now officially stoked for AC4 and this cake is one of the proofs of it. By the way, it comes out next week! Eeeee...

Assassin's Creed 4 will take place in Caribbean which came in handy because I wanted to make a pineapple cake for some time. I drew inspiration from Piňa Colada, an alcoholic cocktail made from coconut rum, pineapple juice and cream. The cocktail is definitely Caribbean in nature, so I thought it would give the cake the proper flavour. I was deciding between adapting a red velvet cake (because of the red color) and a carrot cake but then I decided the chocolate flavour of RV would probably suppress the rum, pineapple and coconut punch I wanted the cake to have.

Carrot cake itself is quite sweet and moist and but I didn't want the bits of carrot to be found in the final product. I puréed the carrots into soft mash and they disappeared in the batter while giving it their thickening properties. The cake was great, tasted like pineapples with coconut, though the rum flavour was hardly there. Perhaps more rum next time?

Also, I gotta nag about the buttercream. Is Czech confectioner's sugar sweeter than the American one? The buttercream ended up way too sweet. It was okay with the pineapple in the middle layer but the top was too much sweet but I followed a recipe from my book to a point... So I don't know. Any tips on European buttercream frosting will be greatly appreciated :)

Malacca

In a market that is saturated by smaller indie tabletop games with zombies and Cthulhu themes, it is always nice to play something that avoids the cosmic madness and brain related issues. Something like, let's say, pirates. Though I suppose that pirates could be becoming the new trendy theme... There are a lot of pirate board games coming out next year and now even a major video game studio is trying to break out with their pirate game. After all, the pirate buccaneers and roguish swashbucklers can be found as well in games set in the ever-popular steampunk style. It is only one step from that to fame... or infamy

Malacca is a game by Czech game designers who in 2006 made an interesting tactical fantasy RPG board game, Dorn which later even got an expansion. Since then they have been focusing on making board games that have not seen a retail release as they were designed for kids and students to learn basics of ecology or economy. Malacca is their first real attempt to get back to the market with a game that is pure fun.

Blueberry Cheesecake

I spent my birthday alone in the bed feeling miserable because I was really lucky to get the summer tonsillitis on the special day while everyone spent their vacations elsewhere. But at least I had time to look for a nice cake that I would celebrate my postponed anniversary with. I have never made a cheesecake before but I've heard everyone saying that it is a really easy cake to make.

Easy isn't challenging but since I was able to mess up those flapjacks a month ago, I figured out I didn't need a challenge but a nice comfort cake.  In the end it was actually quite easy but it still managed to brown a bit more on the top. It was perfect on the inside but it didn't look like a proper cheesecake. That's because it is a bit tricky to regulate the temperature in a gas oven. If you want to avoid the brown top, put baking paper on it for the last 15-10 minutes in the oven.

Strawberry Shortcake

I wanted to bake something chewy last week and I found a recipe for flapjacks. However I must have messed up the ingredient measuring because when I baked it, after 15 minutes it was still moist and when I left it in the oven some more, it burned black. I blamed my getting out of practice after not baking anything in a long time so for the next project, I chose something foolproof. I've already made muffins and I've already made cookies but I've never made shortcakes, a kind of cake that is small and cut out into round shapes and assembled vertically.

Spending the weekend at the cottage, I was far away from the wonders of culinary present such as oven, cookie cutters or regular scales. Nevertheless, I attempted to make a strawberry shortcake since it's the strawberry season. While I had all the necessary ingredients ready, I didn't have the oven to bake the cakes in. I used a large remoska which can't regulate its temperature and I'm sure that it doesn't reach the prescribed 200 degrees C. Instead of risen cakes, I ended up with cookie-like pieces that weren't tall enough to be cut in halves and filled with strawberries.

On Arkham Horror's many expansions

So what's the haps with this blog, asked no one. Nothing much, I have been bit busy with writing other stuff. Especially since now my job is to write stuff, I am having difficulties stuffing writing into my free time as well. Writing and baking and boardgame playing...

A friend of mine bought Arkham Horror about a year ago and he got several expansions with it. He didn't have time to play it yet (or so he says) and has been planning to throw an AH party. Somehow I became the person who knows about the game the most because I played it several times and with various expansions. There are 8 expansions of which I have played 4. I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means but yeah, among those who haven't played the game, I know the most :D

The problem with Arkham Horror and its expansions is that the base game itself can go for hours and each expansions adds features that extend and complicate (or deepen) the gameplay. Playing the game with all the expansions at once is very difficult and will drive any newcomers crazy... Maybe that is the point but still I suggest choosing playing them separately or in a combination of two each time you play which would keep the game fresh and still enjoyable. What follows is a summary of the expansions I know with recommendation whether they work when mixed with others or not.

Victoria Sponge Cake

All those things that keep getting in the way of baking, like exams and changing jobs and more exciting things like running and trying to keep a diet of sorts (who am I kidding? I love cake). However, there is an important date coming soon, Friday 14th June is the International Steampunk day.

Steampunk is cool if you're a geek and only a tiny bit weird but harmless if you are not. The whole idea is to dress and act (and relive) the period of the industrial revolution during Queen Victoria's reign with clothing adorned with cogs and brass. In a fictionalized period of the age of steam, there are blimps in the sky and fascinating machines as if from the works of Jules Verne propel adventurers on whatever journey they might be on.

Anyway, when I learned that there was such a thing like a Steampunk day, I immediately knew how to celebrate it. Majestic Queen Victoria which lived for 800 years (she looked great for her age) supposedly loved this one dessert which is today known after her. When I looked into it more, I found some background info that she had it with her daily afternoon tea with her personal assistant. Charming! And since Steampunk is tightly knit with the Victorian period, a slice of Queen's favourite dessert should satisfy everyone from high aristocrats to the greasiest of monkeys.

The City

In accordance with my continuing prejudice against cards games, once again I was pleasantly surprised by one that was actually fun to play. It was at a board game party couple weeks back where people both that play board games usually and those who don't gathered around a table to play something. It was either Catan (which I don't like) or something easy for others to learn quickly. The game I brought was quickly dismissed, much to my disappointment, but the picked alternative, the card game The City proved to be a fun game in itself.

Building a city is awesome and anyone that has ever played SimCity will attest to it. However, the complex nature of it suits computer games better than board games which results in city building board and card games being usually based on something other than balancing RCI. Sure, there is Alhambra with its many expansions but that is not really a city building game either. It's laying tiles to each other so that they connect with walls. More like a logical puzzle, I'd say.

The City is not about balancing RCI either but it's more city building than any other board game I've played. As with most of the card games, the luck plays a large part here. You are dealt some cards and for the couple first rounds, as you're building your first buildings, you try to set a specialization of your future city. Each building has some attributes and most of them react to other buildings in your city, so of course, you are trying to create such building combinations that give you some very nice bonuses.

Village

I'm down with a nasty case of tonsillitis and most of my day I just roll around in bed, hurting everywhere and sweating like I was on a treadmill. First couple days I couldn't do much but now when the antibiotics have started to work, I decided it would be nice to write something about the game I bought last year since in my current condition I can't bake anything.

I hadn't heard about Village before I stumbled upon it in an online shop. The description said it won several GOTY awards and BGG claimed it put a twist on the worker placement scheme that I like. So, I was quite looking forward to trying out something new, unfortunately Village didn't turn out the way I expected.

After spending about an hour sticking numbers on countless figures and skimming the rules, I was ready to play the game. But with whom? My parents didn't like the complexity of the rules, my friends weren't exactly thrilled about its theme. It wasn't until about a month later that I played the game for the first time. And I have to say I was less than happy about my latest purchase. Village seems to me as a game that tries too hard to re-invent the worker placement genre, or better to approach it from a different angle, that it just ended up being quite unpolished around the edges.

Cantuccini

There was this Italian guy on TV with his fancy cooking show and actually it wasn't half bad. Obviously, if you're a chef, you know something about cooking and if you're an Italian chef, Italian food is probably your expertise. Or it should be when you're on TV.

This one time, he made cantuccini, an Italian biscuit-y thing with nuts. They're pretty hard and crunchy and you're supposed to serve them with a dessert wine. I made it once before I even had the blog and they were quite nice but I think I left them in the oven for too long because they were practically inedible without dipping into hot cocoa.

So for my second attempt, I decided to add a bit of oil into the recipe. Believe it or not, the chef's recipe had no oil or milk in it. It was just the eggs! I guess that must have been the cause for the hardness... Anyway, you still want these to be more crunchy than chewy, so I recommend baking it twice. First 20 minutes, then cut into pieces and then 5 more minutes just for the added crunchiness :)

Dragon Strawberry Milkshake

Ever since the time I saw the teaser trailer for Dragons from The Secret World, I wanted to make the strawberry milkshake that the protagonist of the trailer makes.

Another version of the video was released eventually, this time it had the recipe for the milkshake at the end and that was it - the recipe was handed to me on a silver plate. I only had to wait until the strawberries were in season...

Late April is not the strawberry season by any means but the store I go to for afternoon snack had them discounted for the time being and so it was decided, I would make the milkshake. Was it chance or providence, it was also my name day, a day in the year that's treated as a smaller birthday (optionally with a small gift and a small cake). There was no better day to have a Dragon Strawberry Milkshake prepared for an after-dinner dessert.

I made enough milkshake for three people with adjusted values from the original recipe and also converted it to metric units, as I always do, but if you want the original recipe, here is the screenshot from the teaser trailer.

Nádivka - Easter Stuffing Cupcakes

Even though Easter is long gone, there's one thing I miss about it the most. It's the traditional Czech Nádivka, stuffing which you paradoxically don't stuff into anything (though you can) but you eat it on its own. Clearly, it used to be put inside a goose or a chicken, but nowadays we just eat it as a cake. A savoury cake.

This Easter my mum came up with a cupcake version of Nádivka that I fell in love with. It was SO good that the little cupcakes practically disappeared in a while. It is the combination of bacon and rohlíky with the spring herbs that makes you crave more as soon as you finish one. Omnomnomnom. 

I know that rohlíky are pretty much a Czech speciality and anywhere else in the world you have to do with all sorts of boring bread but if you'd like to make your own Nádivka cupcakes, I suggest using a fresh baguette, which would be rohlík's closest substitute, in my opinion.

Carrot Cupcakes

I've been meaning to make a batch of carrot cupcakes for couple months now. The carrot cake is the very first recipe here on my blog, so this might be seen as a sort of back-to-the-roots thing but don't worry, that's not really happening. I suppose the carrot connotates with rabbits which are prominently represented during the Easter mass-marketing and when I was thinking about the Easter baking project, I found myself coming back to the carrot cake often. Eventually, I made jidáše and saved the carrot cupcakes for later.

The thing is that people love food for free, that's one thing I've noticed. Guys and girls at the office like to be treated to something I made and when they don't get something over a long time, they start to complain and nudge me and demand free food. Free desserts. Free cupcakes. And I cave in under the peer pressure and bake something. These carrot cupcakes are partially a product of what I've just described.

Jidáše

Just before Easter and it's time for another Czech speciality. Last year I published a recipe for wonderful mini mazance, this year I chose to make jidáše (yi-dah-she, sg. jidáš, pl. jidáše), a specific kind of sweet bread that resembles the tangled beard of Judas (after whom they are named) or as another tale goes, the entwined bread represents the rope upon which Judas hanged himself in the end. However, the tradition of jidáše goes further beyond Christianity to the age of paganism. Then, obviously not called after Judas, it was actually a ritualistic bread in various shapes, it could even look like animals. This proto-jidáš was eaten on what is now called Maundy Thursday before the sunrise. It was covered in honey to protect people against diseases and snake bites.

Now, I'm not the one to dwell on religious symbolism of food too much but even today, not all jidáše look like two entwined ropes, so I guess the pagan legacy is still there in our folk culture. Along with the infamous whipping girls with a special Easter stick (...traditions), the Czech Easter is not the same without jidáše and nádivka (a kind of stuffing that is actually eaten on its own and it's absolutely delicious, maybe I'll post the recipe some other time too).

Zerg Pudding Pie

Zerg Rush

It's less than a year since Diablo 3 came out and there it is - another wonderful opportunity to celebrate a computer game release with a baked goodness. Heart of The Swarm, the first expansion to the very popular RTS StarCraft 2, is coming out on 12th March, the upcoming Tuesday, and it is going to focus on the Zerg swarm and its fate after the big thing at the end of the Wings of Liberty. I dare not to spoil anything because it's awesome and you should find out on your own.

When I was thinking how to make a Zerg pie, I had couple ideas but I always came back to that it had to be slimy. Of course, Zergs are all about being slimy and what's slimier than The Creep? The purple microorganism that the race spreads on its colonies to allow faster movement, regeneration and mutating into structures was the perfect filling of the celebratory pie.

Cracked - 6 Boardgames That Ruined It for Everyone

Cracked is one of my favourite sites where I go to read something funny. Their daily TOP X articles that poke fun at stereotypes, share extremely random trivia and comment of current events rarely fail to entertain my delicate (and sometimes bit twisted) taste in comedy.

One of their latest articles points at six games that forever doused in many people any interest to play boardgames. I agree with the author in many points. I only miss the horrendous Sorry (Člověče, nezlob se in Czech) among them but kudos for including Battleship there.

The article is a fun read that suggests much better alternatives to the games on the list. I suggest you check it out, even if only for the lolz.

6 Boardgames That Ruined It for Everyone at Cracked

Flashpoint: Fire Rescue

The first time I came across Flashpoint (called Záchranáři in Czech) was at the Czech yearly board game convention Deskohraní. It was one of three games I played there with random people (the others were Pandemic and Dorn), with a man and his little daughter in this case. The game was explained to us by an attendant and then we decided to try it on our own. Me – a seasoned gamer, them – casual players, we took on roles of three fire-fighters who had to rescue trapped persons from a house in flames. My co-players had to leave before we finished the game and I couldn't find anyone interested in the game at the time, so I moved on to another table with another game. Flashpoint, however, stayed in my head.

As I already mentioned, the players take roles of an emergency rescue team of fire-fighters  The goal of the game is to rescue trapped civilians from a building in flames before the it collapses. The fire spreads quickly between each player's turn so the more people play, the more they need to be careful or their fire-fighters might get caught in fires before their turn is up. Each turn, a player has a number of action points (AP) that he can spend on movement, extinguishing fires, opening and closing doors and carrying a victim. There is not enough APs to cover every emergency, so players must coordinate their collective actions to, for example, douse fires so that the next player may move to a point of interest which might turn out to be a person in need.

Boardgames on Kickstarter 2: We can fund it!

Betty the boardgame player

The month of February was a dry period for both baking and playing board games for me. I'm still looking for another recipe that could be a proper follow-up to the videogame inspired bonbons and random stuff keeps me from finishing putting down my thoughts on Flashpoint. From time to time I check Kickstarter for interesting stuff but since I'm trying to save money now, I don't fund much stuff. Well, except for HabitRPG and Dreamfall Chapters... Damn!

Anyway, I came across couple of current Kickstarter projects that piqued my interest. A lot of board games seem to get funded lately and I hope these three will get too. If I had to choose one, I'd go for Drum Roll with a heavy heart because the others seem fun as well. Still, Drum Roll might be a bit too similar in its gameplay to Dungeon Petz that I already own which makes me reconsider spending money on it. But at least there would be no shipping as I plan to attend Spiel 2013. Gah, decisions!

All these games seem to be on the right track to reach their goals, but I hope that my post will help them with some extra funds. If you have time and none of these games grabbed your attention, try finding something you might like among the other projects that are currently running :)

(Once again I declare that I am in no way related to Kickstarter or any of the projects... Yet, wink wink.)

The Secret World Bonbons

I guess it's no secret that I'm a computer game fan as well. I already published one PC game inspired recipe and now I came up with a way to represent the dark urban fantasy MMORPG The Secret World as a dessert.

In the game, there is another world hidden from us. It is  so near, that it is almost tangible. Every tale and conspiracy theory are true in The Secret World. You are one of the chosen ones by Gaia, you are brought to this world to fight the forces of evil that stir beyond the veil. You belong to one of three factions that, while normally enemies with each other, joined forces to fight against the dark threat. The power-hungry Illuminati controlling the North America, the traditionalist Templars based in Europe, and the chaos instigators Dragon that have hold of Asia.

These three societies each don their colour - blue, red and green respectively - yet to our world they are hidden amongst myths. This gave me and idea for a chocolate covered candy that would have three distinct flavours, so you'd never know which you're going to get. Each, of course, would need to have the proper colour too.

New games in my collection - Flashpoint, DrunkQuest

Drunkpoint is good, but Flashquest is sexier

January was a hectic month for me. Aside from studying for exams and starting a final phase of a project at work, I managed to get two new board games. One I bought while on a shopping spree, the other I funded in September on Kickstarter and it finally made its way to me. And in what was left of my free time I played a lot of The Secret World.

Anyway, I had the chance to try each of the games – Flashpoint - Fire Rescue is an easy to learn but difficult to master cooperative game when the players take roles of firefighters that must evacuate people from a building in flames before it collapses. The players must decide between saving the victims and dousing the ever-present flames and hope that there won't be an explosion anywhere near. Each firefighter has 4 action points in a turn that they can spend on various actions but since even a move from one space to another takes 1 AP (and extinguishing a flame costs even 2 APs), you really need to think about your moves. Flame spreads between each player's turn so in 4 players, it will spread four times before a firefighter gets to move again. There are to variants to the game – one family with simpler rules and one advanced with more stuff like hazardous materials, points of ignition, jobs and vehicles for the firefighters. I have yet to try the full,advanced version because I sorta got lost in the rules.

DrunkQuest, as the name suggests, is a drinking game but this time it is not a variant of a game but a full-fledged party card game. With nice drawings and fantasy setting (and rules), it makes a nice alternative for geeks (Drunk Arkham Horror – everytime you lose sanity, take a shot) who want to drink but play at the same time. Similar to Munchkin, each player has to fight monsters whose attributes can other players change by playing cards from their hands. Every monster has a drink value that can be increased or decreased depending what cards are played on the monsters. To defeat the monster, the player must take that many gulps of their drink as is the monster's final drink value. Since the number is usually around 7, it's best to play with beer or alcohol mixed with soda :)

I still want to give myself some time and more plays before writing on each of the games. Until then, enjoy TSW inspired chocolate bonbons.

Christmas round-up - Cookbooks reviews

It’s sort of funny how things turn out sometimes. For many years I had only two cookbooks – Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook by Terry Pratchett and a cupcake recipe collection called 200 cupcakes by Joanna Farrow. I never gave thought to getting more - I’m more of a digital kid and I can find all the information I need on the internet. However, this Christmas I found three different cookbooks under the tree  for all my fancy food, cupcake and dessert treats.

First I flipped through the pages of each book but later I came back to read more. Each of the books is specific in what desserts it contains. So while I’m waiting for the only shop in Prague that has peppermint extract to restock (should be next week), I decided to write a little overview of what each of the books focuses on and how good or interesting its content is.

Sugar Cookies with M&Ms

Making cookies is easy. Making sugar cookies is even easier. You can’t possibly make a mistake. Did you put in more sugar than needed? So what? They will only be sweeter.

While other recipes might make you feel like an alchemist by how they require careful measuring and combining in a certain way, sugar cookies (like brownies) don’t need any intricate preparation or hard to get ingredients. It’s pracitcally just sugar and flour.

When I first started with this whole baking business years ago, the second cookies I ever made were these sugar cookies with M&Ms. I got the recipe from the official M&Ms site then but when I looked for it last weekend, it wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know why, I found them quite delightful. Sugar cookies, like cupcakes, usually serve as a base for some kind of decoration on their tops. In this recipe, the M&Ms on the top add cheerful colors to the cookies and make them visually very appealing. The sugar caramelizes on the edges so they are a bit crunchy for the first bite but then they turn out to be quite chewy on the inside.