Absolute Best Mug Cakes Cookbook: 100 Family-Friendly Microwave Cakes by Rockridge Press
My rating: 4/5 cats
MARCH PROJECT IS OVER!!!
MUG CAKE MARCH PART TWO. part one can be found here, and let’s hope this is an improvement.
GOOEY CHOCOLATE
sticking to my declaration that chocolate cake is the best test of a cookbook’s quality, i started here
and it was delicious
although it may have been even better had i not been such a dummy. see, unlike the other two mug cake books i have used, this one goes ex vitro: you make the batter in a bowl and then you pour it into a mug. which = more work and more dishes and kind of goes against the whole raison d’être for mug cakes, but whatever. this one called for 2 eggs, beaten, so i beat the eggs in one bowl and mixed the rest in another bowl (it also calls for melted butter, if you’re keeping a tally of how many dishes we’re dirtying), forgetting to add the beaten eggs to the concoction. the mug had been microwaving for 40 seconds before i noticed, yelled FAAAAAAAAACK, and mixed the half-hot batter and beaten eggs together, hoping that food science was looking the other way. it still tasted fine—better than the other book’s chocolate cake, but yeah.
i’m why i can’t have nice things.
BUTTERSCOTCH
the swollen explosion of this one is all on me. all of the recipes in this book make 2 servings of mug cake; the batter is meant to be divided into two mugs for sharing or for ambidextrous gluttony. but for those of us on a mug-cake-a-day path, that is too many mug cakes! going forward i’m gonna try to just math it out, but this time, i made the full quantity, and once i had filled the fox mug halfway, the remaining batter seemed scanty, so i decided to make one big mug cake instead of one regular cake and one miser’s cake, and that’s the story of that.
it may not be the prettiest cake on the block, but we have that in common. another thing we have in common is that we are both full of artificial butter flavoring.
CHOCOLATE-COVERED CHERRY
the author says this is “a perfect quick dessert for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner,” so i made it in the sexxiest mug i own—one that greg made just for me featuring one of my veryfirst crushes.
such a flirt!
this one was slightly dry—i think i overmixed the batter and mary berry would be very disappointed with me, but the admiral—
the admiral forgives.
CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER
see, i made it in TWO mugs
this one contains peanut butter AND peanut butter cups for doubleplusgood mug-caking. there’s not much else to say about it. peanut butter. chocolate. duh.
CLEMENTINE
this is my favorite one so far, oh boy! so citrussy and zesty and spongetastic! I can feel the scurvy leaving my body and that other trendy illness of the moment reconsidering its approach.
come at me, corona-bro.
BLUEBERRY-WHITE CHOCOLATE
no, wait, THIS one is my favorite so far. it’s a blueberry masterpiece, a white chocolate revelation, but pro tip: microwaved blueberries are the hottest things there have ever been, so be patient. don’t burn your mowf.
and if you are ever in andover, maine, go to this restaurant. they have excellent hash. not THAT kind, ya hippie. although…yeah, probably also that kind.
DOUGHNUT
i decided to do this one in a bowl instead of a mug, to make it more doughnut-round instead of cylindrical, and ta-daaaa
i liked this one a lot; it was very nutmeggy, but maybe a little dry. i can fix that for next time, though. all of these recipes i’m making are the ‘basic’ ones, but each also has a few suggestions to zazz ’em up—with toppings and add-ins and glazes and ganaches. i’m testing to see if they’re worth the extra effort of adding the zazz; if they can stand on their own. this one, well, i would definitely fold chopped apple pie filling into it.
RASPBERRY-COFFEE CAKE
look at that little bloop of escaped raspberry!
this was very yummy and sticky, but it definitely needs a ‘sweet vanilla glaze’ to make it register as coffee cake.
i don’t care, i ate it all up and now i have to go to work through a forest of tainted subway poles, licking raspberry jam off my fingers, and i hope you are all enjoying your relaxing quarantines.
LEMON-BLUEBERRY
now, i have already declared both clementine and blueberry-white chocolate to be my favorites, so what happens when i combine the clementine-adjacent flavor of lemon with blueberry? does it become my ultra-favorite?
no, but it’s really goddamn good! and another excellent way to ward off illness; all that vitamin c and superfruit magic wending its way through you. i’d meant to make a more st. patrick’s day-relevant mug cake for today, but all the bars are closed, parades and free book depots cancelled; celebrating would feel like a SHAMrock.
CHEESECAKE
i decided to go mugless again in order to give the graham cracker crust its time in the spotlight. along with, apparently, these mucusoid smears of cheesecake on an inexpertly wiped glass.
i do not endorse microwave-cheesecake. the flavor is good, but the texture is too compressed and firm for cheesecake. still, add some jam, no one’s complaining. and if they do, they can go shelter in place elsewhere.
MAPLE-BACON
go home, fort vancouver regional library mug—you’re drunk!
and this is what happens when you try to cram it all into ONE mug because you’ve accidentally scooped most of the bacon out with the first glop of batter and you think, “well, i don’t want just a MAPLE mug cake!” which is silly, because it would have been delicious even without the bacon. this is like a delicious, somewhat runny, mcgriddle.
i love this. i even love the half-baked puddle. i might make it the exact same way next time. AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME!
PINK CHERRY
sorry, the world falling apart was a bit of a setback to my mug cake project and i got behind in my posting, but here we go again!
so pink! so cherry!
this one was nice and light and sponge-y and ALSO very healthy because it is egg-white only and maraschino cherry juice counts as a fruit.
PEACH COBBLER
i mean, who doesn’t want need an individual portion of cobbler every once in a while? i personally would have added some cozy notes of cinnamon, and ice cream is a must for next time, but individual cobblers for quarantine? i’m living large.
BANANA-CHOCOLATE-PEANUT BUTTER
Q: is this my favorite flavor combination of all time?
A: always and forever
no surprise i loved it enough to make an additional cake out of it, intentionally underbaked for that smooshy, raw-but-melty cookie dough appeal.
and then i quarantined it all up in my tummy. to keep it safe.
APPLE CRISP
this one isn’t a cake, obviously, so i can’t expect that it will rise or anything
still, there are some things that don’t benefit from being made quickly in a mug and apple crisp is one of those things.
there is not nearly enough butter in this recipe so it’s like eating hot flavored dust on top of unpeeled apples and if that’s your thing, you can break quarantine and come get it. and, YES, i do have a library card mug on top of a library card backdrop because NERDTHEMES.
HOLY COW! (exclamation point [sic])
the author explains this cake’s name: A cake so rich and so good that when you bite into it, you’ll exclaim, “Holy Cow!” which seems awfully specific, and i did not. it’s good, but it’s also very involved, for a mug cake whose ONE JOB is to be quick and unfussy
you make the batter in a bowl, pour it into a mug, nuke it and poke holes in the top
then you pour on the salted caramel sauce which you have made from scratch
then you pour on the condensed milk which you have bought like an aristocrat
then you wait for it to absorb a bit. it will not absorb much
then you eat this concoction that is filled with chopped-up butterfingers and drenched in a viscous layer of tooth decay and you fondly remember the time before ‘rona, when you were allowed to go outside any time you wanted and the grocery stores always had bread AND eggs at the same time.
WHITE CHOCOLATE-RASPBERRY
RAAARRRR
risking white chocolate backlash from the white chocolate NAYSAYERS, i made this.
and it was delicious. say what you will, this makes top 5. almost out of room here, so that’s all for tonight!
OATMEAL RAISIN
look at this perfect scoop!
this one is a keeper, and it’s another one you can pass off as health food—oats, raisins, brown sugar, egg, milk, flour, butter—so much food pyramiding is occurring here! i did stray from the directions a bit, though, because quarantine or no quarantine, there’s no universe in which i spend time chopping 1/4 of raisins into four pieces each.
COCONUT
coconuts. delicious. more words later.
NOW IS LATER—MINDS BLOWN!!
this one looks dry in the photo but was actually one of the…juiciest? is that a positive trait in a cake? it ejected verymuch butter underneath, so there was a bit of a SOGGY BOTTOM situation going on, but i am no mary berry, and i have no problem with discovering a butter and shredded coconut afterbirth underneath a cake. it’s been a long day of isolation; any surprise is welcome.
i’m out of room here—sadface—but i can at least post the pictures of the last batch of QUARANTINE MUG CAKES and maybe i can talk about ’em over on blog or something. enjoy these here for now please!
MAPLE-NUT
i guess i will talk about these here “or something.” this is a huge mug, so AGAIN i decided to try to cram it all into one serving, which resulted in some scrumptious hi-hatting.
i have decided that maple cakes are the best cakes, and i will be conducting further experiments to verify
CHERRY LIMEADE
look at this corny mug my co-worker made for all of us! a statement i make with gratitude and affection, of course. most of those names belong to people who have since moved on, but some of us are the type to put down roots BUT WOULD BE TOTALLY WILLING TO ACCEPT A JOB WHERE MY EDUCATION AND SKILLS COULD BE BETTER-APPLIED THAN THEY ARE RIGHT NOW FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF A MODEST SALARY AND AFFORDABLE HEALTH COVERAGE. but, back to cake.
this one was…weird. it called for “limeade concentrate,” which i interpreted (perhaps incorrectly) as frozen limeade concentrate, an item not particularly easy to find in queens in march in the middle of a pandemic. i managed to find ONE container (okay, greg found it before scurrying off upstate), and i discovered whilst making this cake that its expiration date was july 2019. before greg found that one sad expired canister, i’d been checking the stores for either regular or frozen concentrate, with no luck at all. so maybe this cake was off because the concentrate was frozen or because it was expired or because it was just a ‘meh’ recipe, but the flavors and the texture were both…weird. the flavors were muddy and the texture was kludgy and it is best forgotten. also, i broke the mug i had set aside to use for this one, so the whole thing was a disaster. MOVING ON NEXT!
WHITE WEDDING CAKE
THIS IS WHAT BILLY IDOL EATS!
the recipe did not specifically call for “those tiny white candy balls you forgot you had from an earlier mug cake project,” but i used ’em anyway, because they were white. and festive. this was a good way to end the project, with a slightly undercooked, moist and spongy and light cake that made my purchase of clear vanilla extract worth the expense.
AND THOSE WERE MUG CAKES AND THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED!
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