Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream

I'm Mercedes and I'm a stress eater. Just about two months ago, I was writing multiple term papers and, unfortunately, was deciding if we had to put my cat to sleep (we ended up having to.) She was quite old and had been healthy until about a week prior when her kidneys started shutting down. The vet was trying a few things that would keep her quality of life up and hopefully give her a few more weeks or months.

So I made a cake. Chocolate. Because if I'm going to stress eat, I'm going to do it right. And vanilla bean buttercream. I think I mentioned that a friend of mine, the sister of a very good friend of mine, brought me some vanilla beans from Zanzabar. These made me incredibly happy and I was saving them for when I really needed them. This seemed like the perfect occasion for using one: they are delicious and, see above, I figured I'd eat something good if I was going to stress eat; also they make me happy and I needed that.

It's not the prettiest cake, but it was darn good. Seriously, it was delicious. Moist, rich chocolate cake with creamy, sweet, strongly vanilla-y buttercream. What's not to like? Of course because we were stressed, my mom and I polished off the cake in 2 days. It didn't really help us feel better, but then again I did end up with Distinctions on two of those term papers, so maybe it helped with something...

I miss Midnight (my cat), which is why I held onto this post...I wasn't sure I wanted to share that much. But I did promise I'd try to start sharing a bit more about me. The take away from this post is, I hope, that no matter how sad something is, chocolate cake can help even if it's only a tiny bit.