Last year, I ran into a strange bargain that I just couldn’t pass up. I found these tiny, one-serving, cake-in-a-mug mixes from Duncan Hines in an economy-sized box. The store had them on sale for a dollar. That was for ten envelopes. The interesting part was that on the cake aisle the 4-pack was still selling for $2.50. So the 10-pack was a really good deal. I bought some. I’m the first to admit that I was skeptical of them. But at a dime a pop, it was worth the investment.
It turned out, they were pretty decent. It was a little bit of a pain measuring out the 6oz of water. It was a little awkward stirring it in mug, ramakin, or custard cup. It seemed weird to microwave a cake for 70 seconds. But the result was fine. We wound up adding coconut or walnuts or additional chocolate chips to the mix. My glass ramekins are 6oz and my ceramic custard cups are 10oz. So, the custard cups worked best for a five-bite cake result.
Like so many sales though, it came and was gone. They were on sale for a month and then disappeared. That was a year ago.
So, last night, I was wondering what-ever-happened-to and looking on the internet. It turns out, I wasn’t the only one who missed them. I found this recipe on the website Allrecipes.com for making them. Let’s do this, I thought. I’ll make a mug-cake for each of us by doubling the recipe.
The dry ingredients were no problem. 1/4 cup to 1/2 c. 1/8th teaspoon to 1/4 tsp. I’m a little worried about the cake being flat so I added just a pinch of baking powder to the baking soda. And the liquids were puzzling. 3tbs milk plus 1tbs water? Plus 2tbs oil. Let’s just convert that to 1/4 cup water and use powdered milk. Then add an 1/8 cup oil. Now everything is in teaspoons and cups. The result seemed a little thin. So I added an extra teaspoon of flour. That’s not really worth being troubled about. I measured out the flour by volume and not by weight. Variances like that are to be expected. Especially when working with smaller quantities.
I got out two custard cups and I put half of the mixture in each. I nuked one for 100 seconds. The resulting soufflé blew the top off the splatter cover that we habitually use to contain our microwave messes. I grabbed a third custard cup and took half the remaining mixture from the second custard cup. That was it. It filled the custard cup a bit over half full of spongy cake and left room for other things. Like adding a scoop of ice cream to the top for dessert perfection.
I’ll adjust the recipe a little here for how I made mine. Keeping in mind, this makes two servings.
1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
1/8 c. cocoa powder
1/8 c. powdered milk
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/16 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper (because, why not?)
1/4 c. water
1/8 c. canola oil
1/8 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 c. chocolate chips
Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the wet. Stir. Add chocolate chips. Fill two custard cups. Nuke each for 100 seconds. Leave alone for 200 seconds.
