5,4,3,2. 1...

Four birthdays. Each and everyone of them involved a surprise so intricately planned and carefully executed, inspiring tears, laughter and more than a little love.

The minute hand covered the circumference of the clock faster than I thought it would as I spent my night cutting out pencil outlines of alphabets spelling out "Happy Birthday" that will take their seat on a pink floral piece of paper. Shuffling them around, I realised that my past month was filled with lots of giving to friends in the hopes of making them feel loved while a million miles away from home on their special day.

And as I feel my liveliness ebbing away as the dark pulls on, I couldn't help but wonder if anyone out there would do the same for me. I'm not asking for love or attention, but sometimes it feels like I'm in a marathon race all by myself, each step getting heavier than the last one. 

But loneliness has been my constant companion throughout my first year, I'm not sure why I am so afraid to face it now. The emotions that run through the blood in my veins now so different from what they used to be. I can no longer answer any question with enough conviction, not even to myself. What can I do about it aside from just going through the deep dark tunnel searching for my way out? I am now so familiar with this feeling of being utterly lost I'm afraid the dreams will stop. 

I guess this is all part of being a student wanting so badly something that she cannot even recognise. But I won't ask for anything, I refuse to. I know I'm proud, but I also know that the universe doesn't owe me anything, as my dad reminds me ever so often. I'll continue to pick up the stones along my path making up experiences that will undoubtedly shape a future for me, one that I can call my own.

Chocolate Cake...

In between stressing out because of university and trying to calm down, I had a sudden baking bug bite on Saturday and decided to bake a chocolate cake. Yes the chocolate cake has ruined all my meticulous healthy eating, but I am not trying to deprive myself of anything, and baking is like therapy to me. I feel that baking a chocolate cake is not the easiest thing in the world, just because so many people love it and have eaten thousands of versions of it. But I am really happy with the way mine turned out, I almost wished it was somebody's birthday so I could give it to them. 

The recipe I used can be found below, adapted from GoodFood. I did not add all the sugar as I felt it would be too sweet. The cake turned out fine in terms of taste but a little on the dry side. Next time, I might try to add about 50 grams extra butter and perhaps more milk as well. I was also supposed to be making chocolate butter icing but my brain was being very slow and I completely missed out the icing sugar from buying the ingredients all the way through to making the icing when I suspected something was missing. So instead, I just put together chocolate and cream and it turned out to be super yummy as well.

My next baking project is a Japanese Cheesecake. One of my housemate loves it and so do I. I heard it is pretty difficult to make, but man I am craving that stuff right now and the baking hat is on. I promise to take better pictures next time.

So here's the recipe:

Chocolate Cake

• 125 g dark chocolate
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 150 g butter at room temperature
• 150 g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 200 g self raising flour
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Chocolate cream

• 75 g chocolate
• 1 cup cream

Directions

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius. Butter cake tin.
2. Melt chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water, and constantly stir chocolate to avoid it from burning.
3. Beat the butter until it is soft and add caster sugar. Continue to beat until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then fold in the melted chocolate.
4. Sift in flour in batches folding it into the batter. 
5. Divide mix into two tins and bake for 25 minutes or until skewer comes out clean when poked into cake.
6. Remove cakes from oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes before taking them out of the tin.

Chocolate Cream

1. Melt the chocolate with 3 tablespoons of cream. Leave to cool for a few minutes.
2. Add the rest of the cream into the mixture and beat until stiff.

Give it a try! The smell of cake in the oven filling the kitchen and the happy faces of people when they eat the cake is worth all the work put into the cake, though I promise you this is not a very hard recipe at all. :)

ps watching Super Bowl? It is 12.40am in the morning over here in the UK and I really need to get my on life :(