Last Saturday night, Jon and I had the evening to ourselves and had one more game to try that was gifted to us by Mighty Boards. Since it was Saturday night, we of course needed something sweet to go with it. So I finally tried a pop-tart recipe I’ve been eyeing for a while. Was it worth the wait? Read on to find out!

At a Glance…

Pop Tarts

This pop-tart recipe is written gf, which is not necessary for me, but I always like to try a recipe as is first, before messing with it. I’ve had and made some great gf things, so it was worth a try. Now I’ll be honest that I was not the biggest fan of pop-tarts growing up. I found them too dry, and was more the toaster strudel fan with that flaky puff pastry and gooey filling. But, I needed a small batch of something using things I had in the house, so here we are!

All this to say, I was struggling with both the execution and enjoyment of this recipe. The combination of gf flours did not work for me, and the dough was far too delicate to handle and form into tarts. Even after it baked and I tried it, the taste was pretty dry and almost gritty. I’m no professional chef or baker, so I usually blame these things on user error, but I would be curious how this would have been with regular flour. The filling was delightful, and between the filling and the icing we were still happy to eat it, but I would definitely rethink things if there were to be a next time.

Hamlet Parishes

Hamlet is such an unusual little euro game! In it, you’re helping to build up a small little hamlet (aka smaller than a village, lacking things like a church, school, etc.). You’re turning it into a village by creating the church. Delightful!

The mechanisms are where it gets a bit odd. The resources you produce stay on a building and can be used by anyone, as long as they have a worker there. But you also need donkeys to help it get where it’s going. If you’re the one who makes a factory to refine goods, when you go there to make the goods (versus another player), the goods are fancy and worth more. Also, the village pieces are not your typical squares or hexes, but quite unusual shapes, which can be fun and/or frustrating depending on how you feel about that. In some ways, it feels like this would have been better with more than the 2 of us, because we ended up each doing almost exactly half of everything. But I wonder with more than 2 if it would have gotten really crowded and confusing on the board with all those workers, roads, donkeys, etc. We’re still mulling over how we feel about this, which is a good thing! It has some unique things going on and was a fresh take on pick up and deliver, markets, and shared spaces. I definitely want to give this another go!

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].