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.