
There’s no doubt in today’s society that having a microwave makes cooking and meal prep infinitely faster and easier.
Most people think of warming pizza or steaming vegetables in the microwave, but you can also prepare an entire single serving cake in your microwave. It’s an easy process that allows you to enjoy a moist, flavorful dessert in a mug anytime you want one. Here’s how to do it:
Getting Ready
There are a multitude of recipes for easy mug cakes, so you can mix and match and experiment to find the ones you like best. In general, you’re going to need very small amounts of some of your ingredients because a mug cake is typically one serving.
All the best chefs suggest making certain you have a 1/8 teaspoon on hand before you attempt to make a mug cake. You will also want to have a 1/4 cup and tablespoon utensils. As with oven baking, it’s important to be very careful about measuring because a cake can easily be ruined if you over or under measure one of your ingredients.
Prepping The Cake
The great thing about a mug cake is that you simply combine all the ingredients in a mug and mix them together before cooking them. In general, you’ll probably combine the dry ingredients, and then add the wet ones before combining again.
For example, you’ll combine flour, sugar and cocoa powder in your mug. Then you’ll add the egg, milk, vanilla and oil before placing it in the microwave. Other cake recipes will call for other ingredients. For example, you can find recipes for vanilla cake, banana bread and carrot cake that you can make in your microwave.
Cook Times
As with ingredients, the actual cook time for mug cakes varies by recipe. Of course, from start to finish, you want something that takes 10 minutes or less. Prep should take up no more than half that time, leaving you at least five minutes for cooking your cake.
You want to make sure it’s completely cooked through, especially if it contains eggs, as this cuts down on the risk of food-borne illnesses. Many mug cakes only need about two minutes of cook time, which means that in just a few minutes, you’ll have a moist, delicious cake that you only spend a few short minutes prepping and cooking.
Things To Consider
When you make mug cakes, it’s a great way to prepare everyone their own favorite cake. It’s a fun idea for parties and gatherings because each person can customize their cake and you can cook each one as you go. This is really fun for a child’s birthday party or just for a fun family event that gets everyone together in the kitchen.
There are some things to consider before going forward. When the mug cake is finished, the cup is going to be very hot, so make sure you use appropriate potholders to remove it from the microwave. You can let it cool and eat it straight from the mug, or you can remove it to a plate to prevent burns.
The cup is likely going to need a good soak before being washed to help remove the cake from the inside. It’s also a good idea to place the mug on a plate before microwaving, which helps keep spillovers from messing up the inside of your microwave.
Popular Recipes
Now that you’re ready to make your mug cake, here are some popular websites with delicious recipes that will give you confidence in the technique. Enjoy!