"Stressed" is "Desserts" Spelled Backwards.

And so the exam results period is upon us. Tomorrow (I can't quite believe it), at stupid o'clock in the morning, students around the country will be picking up AS and A level results. As I'm off to college next year, I need to gain 1 pass (E grade as I understand it). If I don't get that 1 measly pass, I have no idea what I'll do. Probs cry for a very long time.

Exam related stuff can stress me out, so I decided to busy myself the past couple of weeks, arranging to meet up with friends, sewing, craft work and the most dangerous of all these: cooking. Now my track record for cooking isn't brilliant and usually involves me setting fire to things. E.g. pasta, microwaves, etc. But I'm a determined sort of person, so I 'borrowed' my sister's cupcake book, and decided to make some coffee cakes.

Primrose Bakery cookbook and icing bowl

Surprisingly, the cakes turned out quite well!

Coffee icing complete with coffee bean decoration

Managed to find red and white spotty cake cases too

I made a batch of about 18 cakes, but when I came to ice them, there appeared to be less cakes than before... Note to self: NEVER leave cupcakes unattended when other family members are around. I therefore had quite a lot of icing left over and it would have been a shame to waste it. So naturally, I had to eat it. BIG mistake. Managed to stop myself halfway through the bowl though and have put the rest in the fridge. I'll use it to ice the large batch of cakes I'll be making tomorrow if my results aren't what I wanted...or they could be celebratory cakes. Let's hope for the latter.

Then something very strange happened: I washed up all the cookery things I'd used AND cleaned the kitchen. Am normally very reluctant to do this and leave it for a couple of days before I decide to tackle it. Then realised the amount of coffee I had put into the cake and icing mixtures, PLUS the numerous large mugs of coffee I had had today (to settle my nerves obv) was probs more than my normal daily intake...

So the conclusions of today's experiment are that a) I CAN COOK b) coffee makes all things possible and c) when stressed, desserts are always helpful. FACT