About a month ago, I got into the Hearthstone beta and subsequently spent all the moneys on desperately trying to get amazing cards. At the time, I was building a rogue deck, and anything non-rogue was immediately disenchanted. NEVER GONNA PLAY A WARLOCK ANYWAY I GUESS.

This is our town, scrub.

Eventually, I collected and crafted enough cards to build my rogue deck and jumped into ranked play. However, climbing the ladder to Masters 3 was increasingly difficult!

I started messing around with a combo spell deck that relied heavily on setting up your spell damage minions and using headcrack/eviscerate. However, the meta shifted and people on the ladder expected this, so they would kill my minions ASAP… Especially my ringleader. This was clearly not our town, scrub.

Since it was all about control, I decided to try a rogue control deck. All them weapons! It worked for a while, but I got stuck in Masters 2. Then, I tried the Miracle Rogue deck. When it worked, damn, it worked… But most of the time, I would basically die before I got a chance to set up anything.

So, I did some research and crosschecked my decklist with the winning decklists from the ManaGrind tournament. I decided to go with a deck that had a lot of draw power and value minions, such as the Argent Commander. Well, it worked and I broke into Masters 3. Yippie! Plus, I got to keep my Defias Ringleaders. Yeah, beat it.

After getting comfortable with the card attributes and some strategies, I decided to take a stab at Arena. I got my butt kicked so much. Losing definitely sucks, especially when you basically throw the game because you played the cards in the wrong order or because you miscalculated how much damage you could’ve done that turn. I’ve definitely lost a lot of games because I miscalculated the amount of mana I had. Yes, I can totally use 2 of these 6 mana cost cards this turn. Wait a minute…Crap.

People are frighteningly good in arena, too. So when you make mistakes, it hurts a lot!
The people who play arena know which cards to draft, which cards synergize, and when to use those cards. It’s like they KNOW when I have a flamestrike in my hand so they don’t play extra minions before my turn 7. But, what they don’t know is that I have 3 more flamestrikes in my hand. MY MAGIC WILL TEAR YOU APART. 

I wish I saw this more often…

The interesting thing about arena is that you also get a chance to test your skills with other classes. I don’t have enough cards to complete decks for all nine classes, but, it’s nice to take a break from rogue and mess around in arena with a mage or a druid.

Plus, you might even get lucky and draft a fancy legendary like Ragnaros or Sylvanas Windrunner!

Because of my new-found crippling addiction to love of all that is Hearthstone, I’ve decided to immortalize it into baked goods. And thus, Hearthscones were created!

So, pull up a chair by the hearth, and let’s start baking!

WELL MET!

UNIT COMPOSITION

1. 1 pinch of salt
2. 2 teaspoons of baking powder
3. 4 tablespoons of butter, cut into small pieces
4. 1 ¾ cup of flour*
5. ¾ cup of sugar
6. ½ cup of whole milk
7. 1 bartlett pear, chopped
8. ½ cup of blueberry preserves
9. 1 egg (this is for an egg wash)

*if the dough comes out too mushy during mixing, you may need to gently fold in additional flour just to fix the consistency. I recommend adding them in 1/4 cup intervals.

BUILD ORDER

Total prep time is roughly 30 minutes. Cook time is about 16 minutes. This will make 6 scones.

OPENING

1. Combine flour, baking powder, salt in a large bowl.
2. Add in your butter. Squish the butter between your fingers in the flour. Keep doing this until the flour has somewhat of a bread-crumb like consistency.
3. Add in your sugar and gently combine with the dough.
4. Slowly pour in your milk and making cutting motions through the dough with a spoon to combine. You do not want to over mix the dough at this point.
5. Add in your chopped pear. Gently fold the dough until the pears have all combined.

MID GAME

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375° F.
2. Put the dough on a clean, floured surface. You’ll want to use a rolling pin in order to get the dough to the same size (~1.5 inches). Cut the dough into circles using a cookie cutter.
3. Place the dough circles on a baking dish lined with parchment paper.
4. Create the Hearthstone squiggle using foil. Imprint the Hearthstone squiggle into the dough.

LATE GAME

1. Scramble your egg and gently brush the egg over each dough circle. This will help the scones brown.
2. Gently spoon blueberry preserves into each squiggle imprint.
3. Bake the scones for about 16 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.
4. Eat!

Puffy scones!

HMM, WELL PLAYED. 

And that’s GG! Now take your scones, scarf them down and go 9-1 in the arena.

Before BlizzCon, I actually sent a few batches of Hearthscones to Blizzard HQ!

I was incredibly worried that they would arrive in crumbles, but thankfully, they seemed to have made it in one piece! Vaeflare was kind enough to take care of the scones and distribute them to the teams.

Hopefully I’ve inspired you to bake your own delicious Hearthscones!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear the Arena calling my name. I WILL BE YOUR DEATH. 

As a kid, I don’t know if there was anything more satisfying than waking up on a lazy Saturday morning to a heaping pile of French Toast. It may be almost as satisfying as dropping chain fungal growths on an entire Terran army — I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been on the side of the swarm.

I wanted to make an alternative to the traditional French Toast… Something with a bit more personality and complex, yet deceivingly simple. Oh, and of course purple! No Zerg can be without that goopy creep spread. Mmm, Blueberry Creep Spread.

UNIT COMPOSITION

FOR THE TOAST

• 6 slices of bread (I used sprouted whole wheat bread, but feel free to choose regular white bread)
• 1 cup of peanut butter
• 1/2 cup of cream (I used soy cream)
• 2 bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon of Vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 1 tea spoon of butter (not shown)
• 1/2 tablespoon of powdered sugar (not shown — also optional)

FOR THE SAUCE

• 1 cup of blueberries
• 1/3 cup of Grade A maple syrup (or the purest syrup you can find… don’t get syrup with additives in it)

BUILD ORDER

The procedure to make this is pretty simple. The entire process, from prep work to plating, should take about 35-45 minutes. This recipe makes 3 French Toast sandwiches.

OPENING

1. Crack your two eggs into a bowl. Whisk eggs.
2. Add vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon.
3. Whisk in your cream.
4. Transfer the mixture to a shallow dish. This will be used to dip the sandwiches.

MID GAME

1. Place a skillet on high heat.
2. Slice your bananas.
3. Spread peanut butter on each slice of bread.
4. Place bananas on one peanut buttered slice. Place another piece of peanut buttered bread on top to make a sandwich.
   
5. Place butter in the hot pan.
6. Place your completed sandwich in the egg/cream mixture. Let it soak for a few seconds and then flip the sandwich over to coat the opposite side.
7. When sandwich is fully coated, remove it and place in the hot pan.
8. Let the sandwich cook for about 1 – 2 minutes on each side, or until the side is golden brown.
9. Remove sandwich and place on a plate.
10. (OPTIONAL) Dust with powdered sugar.

LATE GAME

French Toast would not be complete without a syrup. But this isn’t just French Toast, this is Infestation Pit Toast. If you’re a true Starcraft pro, use your APM and multi-tasking abilities to create the Blueberry Creep Spread while cooking Infestation Pit Toast.

1. Place a small pan on high heat.
2. Add your maple syrup.
3. Add in your blueberries.
4. Reduce heat to medium.
5. Let the sauce reduce. The sauce will begin to turn purple when it’s done.
6. Remove from heat and plate sauce with the toast.

If you’ve completed your opening, powered through the mid game and survived the late game, then you’re deserved a GG WP.

Enjoy your Infestation Pit Toast with Blueberry Creep Spread with a loved one, such as a lovely Queen or loyal Overlord.

Oh, and to make that fancy Zerg symbol out of powdered sugar? All you’ll need is a computer, a printer, tape, scissors (or x-acto knife) and an index card (or any thick paper). Start by finding an image of the Zerg symbol and print it out. You may need to re-size it.

Once you’ve printed it out, tape the index card behind the symbol. Now start cutting and make that stencil! Just place the stencil over your toast and sprinkle your powdered sugar over it. It should leave you a fancy logo. Hooray!

GL HF GG.