Chocolate cake in 5 minutes!

I found this really cute and easy recipe for a chocolate cake through Craftzine using the simplest ingredients that you can find in your homes! Don't worry if you don't have an oven, because this recipe only calls for a microwave oven.

Well, so I made one and this is how it turned out:

sorry about the poor resolution because I took the picture using my crappy phone camera

There are several things that I modified. I didn't have cocoa powder, so I used Milo powder instead. I didn't have cake flour, so I used All-purpose flour instead. Last but not least, I didn't have a microwave oven, so I used the conventional toaster I have. So in the end, it took around 20 minutes for my cake to bake and the top was a little burnt.

It tasted OK, not as nice as I thought and I hoped that it would be. Frankly speaking it looks like and even tastes a little like the less starchy version of the Chinese brown sugar cake (Fatt Gao). 

(photo from http://fenyingrecipe.blogspot.com/2008/03/2-fatt-gao-2.html)

But one thing that I really have to say is that the 3 tablespoons stated in the recipe is WAY TOO MUCH. The cake feels kinda oily in my hands and I could almost feel my tummy gaining diameter as I eat.

http://www.dizzy-dee.com/recipe/chocolate-cake-in-5-minutes#comment-2712

A gentleman's ascot

Recently I've been into knitting ascot. They are mini projects that knit up quickly to give almost instant gratification and also, they can be knitted with one ball or less!

I've actually knitted Vickie Howell's Lana and Clark Ascot using Moda Vera Jelly yarn, the blue-white one that you can see from my previous post. It's meant to be a present to my friend, so I don't think I"m going to upload pictures of it so soon. What I can say is that I really felt like making another one for myself after that. (^_^)

But before I do that, I decided to make a black and white ruffled ascot look-alike. It's actually inspired by the Vickie Howell's The Formality Scarf and the ruffles seen in the knitted project "Pretty Pillows" that was featured in the Knitty Gritty Knits book that I got from the local library.

I really like the way it all turned out, although I didn't thought it'd actually look like this when I first started out. It's not really an ascot anymore. I think it looks more like a unique necklace. But one thing I have to admit is that the back doesn't look pretty with my haphazard sewing.