Mug my words, it's cake

MICROWAVE CHOCOLATE CAKE FOR ONE... BUT BETTER FOR TWO 

There are a lot of cravings I can tell myself I don't need to fulfil: a candy bar, fried chicken from a fast food chain, a soda pop. The craving comes, I say no, and it passes.

But I never ignore the voice telling me to have chocolate cake. Thank goodness I don't have them very often  because I don't like store-bought cake and making it myself is too much trouble.

Many years ago, my cousin and I tried making cake in a microwave. The vanilla batter tasted good as we were mixing it and the little cupcakes we made puffed up beautifully in the oven, but once out, they tasted quite horrible and hardened almost immediately. I never tried to make cake in the microwave again.

But when I got this recent craving, I thought I'd look online for a microwave recipe. Maybe there was one that I could try. Well, there are many.

So 12 years later, I was making a cake in the microwave again. This time, the recipe was for just one cake, and it would be made in a coffee mug. The recipe is from instructables.com, but here's a quick rundown of what I did using an alternative suggested at the site:

In a mug, mix 4 tablespoons each of sugar and flour with 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa and 3 tablespoons of chopped chocolate. Add 3 tablespoons each of milk and oil and a splash of vanilla extract. Stir everything together. Microwave on Medium for 4 minutes.

Mud cake in a mug. Next time, clean up the sides first.

I suppose I could have eaten it out of the mug but I thought I'd try to unmould it. So I ran a small spatula around the outside of the cake and inverted the cake onto a plate. A little bit of the base stayed in the mug, so I scooped it out and pressed it onto the top of the cake. I ate it with a scoop of tangy Greek yoghurt.

The original recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of egg, but it also states that the egg can be omitted for a fudgier cake, which is what I did. The mixture was supposed to crown up to the rim of the mug while cooking, but mine didn't rise much. I don't know if it was supposed to be oozy in the middle, like a molten lava cake, but mine came out cooked all the way. It might have been in the oven for too long. Next time, go for three minutes.

I really liked how the inside was red like a Devil's Food Cake. That happens when bicarbonate of soda is added to cocoa powder. Thing is, there is no soda in this chocolate cake. That's something to read up on for another time.

First spoonful of this cake, and I was impressed. It was fudgy and tasted very good. I was actually surprised. Even though it took some time for me to photograph, the cake remained soft. For one minute of work and four minutes of waiting, this was not bad at all.

But notice the 4 tablespoons of sugar among the ingredients? And the 3 tablespoons of oil? By the time, I was into the third scoop, it had become too much for me. I couldn't go on and finished the yoghurt, leaving the cake on the plate. Half an hour later, I had a headache, a sign of too much sugar. The cake remained soft though. I will need to work out a better balance of ingredients for myself. Since it only takes five minutes, I'll be experimenting until I get this right.

For now, even the thought of this cake will be quite enough to keep the cravings away for a while.