I am baking, believe it or not. It's only the second time I've ever done so in my life... and the first time in over eight years. The cake is currently in the oven, and I'm hoping it turns out well. I didn't quite follow the recipe after all, having forgotten when to put in a certain ingredient and ending up mixing it in far too early. In addition, given my current situation where I may end up having to move from my beloved apartment so as to cut costs, I didn't want to buy a dedicated cake tin and am actually using my roast pan for the cake instead.

Fingers crossed and less than half an hour to go.

The first time I ever tried to bake, I made chocolate chip cookies. Unfortunately, they turned out more like chocolate chip pancakes. Once my mother recovered from her laughing fit, she said it was probably because my mixture was too moist. My friend/guinea pig on that occasion doesn't remember the pancake-ness of the cookies, but does remember that they tasted good.

This is a good thing, because said friend will be a guinea pig for the cake as well. Hopefully, she'll still be around to see her boyfriend when he touches down in London this Saturday.

On an chocolate-related note, I tried some truly divine hot chocolate from Paul A. Young Fine Chocolates yesterday. It's pure, thick, decadent chocolate-y goodness. Yum. Apparently, if you go to the shop and tell them you read about them on Boing Boing, you'll get a free hot chocolate. Unfortunately for me, I didn't know about this when I came across the shop yesterday!

Edited to add: It turned out edible and rather sweet. There's no taste of chocolate, unfortunately, as I mixed it into the batter, instead of spreading it on top of the batter as the recipe originally called for. Ah well. It just tastes a little caramelly now, which is no bad thing.