We’re recruiting for the Emperor’s Crumbs Army on facebook. Don’t worry, this isn’t the draft; it’s a place to exchange recipes, photos, suggestions and more. We’re even offering an incentive! Anyone who becomes a member of the group Emperors Crumbs Army will be entered to win a selection of  classic Czecho-Slovak treats.

The winner will enjoy crisp wafers with various fillings, the weird and wonderful “soy stick”, unforgettable “Romanca”, indulgent chocolate “Fidorka” and more. You can bet we’ll be stocking up on these delicacies ourselves when we pack our bags for the big move to the US next month. So raise your butter-knife high and join up! The winner will be selected on March 12th, 2010.

The second competition is a bit more involved but it is worth every effort. Try one of our recipes and make a photo or a video. Post it on any photo/video hosting site like flickr, smugmug, YouTube, or vimeo, add the tag emperorscrumbs.com, and in the description of the photo put a link to the recipe. You can enter as many photos/videos as you want, just link to your creations in a comment here so we know where to find them.  We will pick the best submission by March 19th. Along with the amazing and nutritious prize of a fabulous assortment of the best candies and wafers from Slovakia and Hungary, you and your artwork will enter history when we publish it here for everyone to admire!

For me, Christmas is always associated with memories from my childhood. I will definitely make a special post about our customs, but before that I would like to introduce to you our Christmas candy. “Szaloncukor”, or as Slovaks know it, “salonky”, can be translated as “parlour candy”. [Read more →]

I was intrigued by this recipe in a recent issue of our favorite Czech cooking magazine, Apetit, which is for a Babovka, Bundt cake, made with potatoes. I set out to follow the recipe, but as usual, I changed a little here, a little there (I omitted a packet of pudding mix, for example) and now I’m not sure how much it resembles the original. The potato gives it a wonderfully moist texture, it’s more delicate than I expected, and not too sweet. Perfect with afternoon tea, perhaps. We don’t have a potato ricer and while I used a hand mixer to beat the potato mixture there were still quite a few small lumps in the batter. No matter – they aren’t apparent at all in the finished cake.

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