This was sadly the last strategy session with these two friends until probably mid-August, as we are all getting busy with summer travels. I’d been wanting to do monkey bread for a while, and when I saw this small batch recipe, it seemed perfect for the four of us. Read on to see how it turned out and what we paired with it!

At a Glance…

Monkey Bread

I’ve had great success with The Banana Diaries recipes recently. The cheesecakes and sweet rolls I’ve made have been super easy, fast, and delicious. This sticky toffee monkey bread was pretty tasty, but it was a lot more work than I would’ve liked ! To be fair, I thought I’d have the night before to make it in a leisurely manner, but plans changed and I ended up having to make it in a scrambled fashion in several parts, which wasn’t ideal.

I began trying to get as much done as I could before church and started the toffee sauce. I used coconut cream instead of heavy cream, since that’s what I had (and the internet said it could be substituted), and hoped it would cook down and thicken up faster because of that, but it did not. While Jon was watching and stirring that and soaking dates for the date paste, I made the dough. I got the yeast activated (yea!), and got it rising, though it did seem a bit wetter than dough normally does. At this point, we had to leave for church. The dates were drained, and the toffee sauce left to think about what it had done (or rather not done).

We came back, and the dough had risen some (though perhaps not doubled in size). We got the toffee sauce simmering again, still trying to thicken the stubborn stuff. I moved on to the date paste and added the water and butter and tried to blend it. It didn’t blend well, and tasted way too buttery. I’m not sure if that was intentional or not and the extra butter was supposed to blend into the dough, but I didn’t like how buttery it was tasting so I started adding more dates 🫣. Eventually I got it tasting more like dates and less like butter, but it of course ended up making more of the date paste because of this. The toffee sauce never did thicken, but at this point we were out of time. I made the little dough balls, tried to dip them in the date paste (which didn’t really work since it was so thick and the dough so wet), rolled them in the sugar, and spooned a bit of the liquidy toffee sauce over it. It proofed for about 6.5 hours instead of 8, then it was time to bake. While it had been proofing, I had put the toffee sauce in the fridge. When I took it out, It had gotten a weird solidified layer on the top that I’d hoped would thicken up the rest of it when it warmed back up. This did not happen, and it first got really liquidy again and then ended up as a dry, crumby texture. WEIRD. This is what you get with an amateur baker like myself 😂😂. Anyway, the little breads baked well, and tasted well (especially with the nuts and ice cream), but I’m not sure a) what I did wrong with the toffee sauce and b) if it was worth all the work. Next time I make monkey bread it’ll be a regular kind, sans sauce! Maybe someone more experienced will have better luck with this one. It was still delicious though!

Bosk

Bosk is a beautifully vicious game! It looks a lot like Photosynthesis, but is nothing like it in gameplay. It’s played in two phases, with the first phase consisting of simply putting out your trees, valued 1-4 on intersections of columns and rows. After everyone has placed all their trees, you see who has the most strength in each row and column. Then, for phase 2, you drop leaves from those trees, with the wind telling you which direction to send the leaves and from which trees. You can choose how many leaves to put out (1-8), using each amount only one time. It costs more leaves to cover up leaves that are already there, and the squirrel trumps all! At the end of phase two, you see who has majority of each colored section of the board. And that’s it! It’s a weird combination of tactical and strategic, which I’m sure I don’t play very smartly, but I still enjoy pulling it out every once in a while. The aesthetics are just so good!

I’ve previously talked about Ezra & Nehemiah here. It’s on our 10×10 and one of our newer beige games. There’s so much going on, and you need to do about 5 things before you can do the thing you really want to do! But once you are able to do it, the satisfaction is sweet! Whether you focus on building the temple, clearing rubble and building the walls, or writing the books, each has their own path to victory and unique ways to get there. There’s a lot going on but that’s what makes it so good!

Want to buy these games? Check out your friendly local game store (FLGS), Amazon [here], or get a first-order discount at Board Game bliss [here].