A Better Mug Cake, Take 2 (As in, better than the Better Mug Cake!)

I know it's been a while. Things have been crazy, but they are finally calming down.

Here's a quick run down of what I've been up to in the past two weeks:

• Successfully finished my first year of graduate school.
• Completed my first internship for the program.
• Started a cool second internship for the summer with a trade magazine.
• Attended "opening night" for the 2012 drum corps season!
• Ran in the Run for Your Lives 5K in Indiana...I didn't make it out "alive," but I had a blast doing it!
• Bought new running shoes (in anticipation of the awful things that would happen to the old ones at RFY).
  
• Got my first "big girl" job--still working out the details, but I'll update on that a little bit later... =)

Anyway, all of this busy-ness has meant less time than usual for cooking. I've been making some tasty summer salads to take to work for lunch, and I'll be posting some recipes for those later.

But, salads? Surely that's not why you're here, looking at this post...

No, you're here because you've seen my claim for a better, better mug cake. I'm not exaggerating, either. This cake is faster and simpler, with fewer ingredients, and completely amazing. And fewer calories than the original!

The great thing about this mug cake (aside from all of the above benefits) is this: it makes a tasty, delicious chocolatey sauce at the bottom of your mug. And the more milk you add, the more sauce you get! (Although I suspect you would eventually hit the law of diminishing returns with that one...but I haven't yet.) It reminds me of the pudding cakes my friends and I would make at sleepovers back in high school: dense, chocolatey cake with a rich sauce underneath to spoon on top, that we'd eat straight from the pan at some point after midnight. I'm pretty sure that cake came from a box, but this one certainly doesn't have to!

Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me figure out where I found this recipe. (I'm usually very good about these things...but the site never made it to my bookmarks!) So, I'm not trying to plagiarize, and if you know where the recipe came from, please tell me so I can link to it. And leave a raving review.

Saucy Chocolate Mug Cake (Or, the Best Mug Cake Ever)
Serves one

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 4 tbsp skim milk (or a little more...) 
• Toppings and/or mix-ins

Some of the usual suspects...

Steps

1.  Combine the dry ingredients in a microwave-safe mug with a fork.

Mix it up!

2.  Add the vanilla and milk. Stir to combine. Add a spoonful of chocolate chips or other mix-in if desired.

What's a well-loved recipe without a little spill on it?

3.  Microwave on high for 45 seconds. Check the cake--it should be mostly dry on top, but you should be able to sort of tilt it back and forth by pressing gently near the rim of the mug. That's a good sign that your sauce is alive and well down at the bottom. Microwave for 10-15 seconds longer if necessary.

An 8-oz mug works fine, as long as your heart can can handle
the pop-up effect. If you're afraid of overflow, use a bigger mug.

4.  Top with Nutella, peanut butter, or whatever. Or just dig in! Enjoy!

Before topping--I realized I never got a good picture of the
"saucy" part--but trust me, it's down there on the bottom!!

4.  Top and enjoy!

Topped with Trader Joe's Almond Cocoa Spread
and a few chocolate chips.

Very good! And around 200 calories, depending on how much milk you add, and your mix-ins and toppings. Enjoy.

Spaghetti Squash with Peanut Sauce

The quarter is FINALLY winding down for me. Tests are over, projects are ending, and only one paper and a few hours of grading stands between me and the end of my first year in graduate school. It's sure been an interesting ride.

All of the craziness means that my food choices have been of the "quick and easy" variety. So, today I'm sharing two recipes that are simple, fast, and go great together: spaghetti squash and peanut sauce. They're easy and delicious, and in a pinch you can make the entire meal in the microwave (as I did when our kitchen sink was clogged and stove top cooking was out of the question).

Spaghetti squash is a really interesting vegetable. At first glance it just looks like a big yellow squash:

2 1/2 pounds of squash-y goodness.

But once you hack it open (and believe me, hack is the right word), it's full of pumpkin-like seeds and pulp, and a thick layer of flesh made up of little strands or "noodles."

See?

You can treat it like a vegetable and turn it into a side dish, or use it like a noodle and make it the foundation of a meal. You're probably not going to fool anyone into thinking it's pasta, but the spaghetti squash is delicious in its own right, and you still get to twirl it around your fork.

Oh, and did I mention they are cheap? Spaghetti squash usually goes for about $.69/pound at my Kroger, and I snagged this one for $1.75. A 2-1/2 pound squash is plenty for two people to eat as a main course; if you're cooking for one, just wrap the uncooked half in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge. It will keep for several days until you are ready to use it.


Quick Spaghetti Squash
Serves 2

Ingredients

1 small spaghetti squash (about 2-1/2 pounds)
Desired toppings (meat, veggies, and/or sauce of your choice)

Steps

1.  Remove any stickers and wash the spaghetti squash with soapy water.

2.  Pierce the spaghetti squash at least once with a knife. Microwave it on high for one to two minutes. This  softens the squash just enough to make it easier to cut and clean. (I don't think your squash will explode after two minutes in the microwave, but I pierce it just in case!)

3.  Remove the squash from the microwave and place on a cutting board. Use a large knife to cut it in half either way. The thing you need to know about the spaghetti squash is that the strings run in rings around the squash, not from end to end. If you cut it in half lengthwise (which is more difficult, since you have to deal with the stem), you're cutting the strands in half. If you cut it across its "equator" (which is easier) you'll get full strands but the halves are a bit trickier to deal with as they are less stable. 

Aside from pre-cooking for a minute or two, I really
haven't discovered the "trick" to making this easier.

(Or, poke some holes in it, cook it whole, and deal with it later--but it's going to be very hot, so be careful!)

4.  Use an ice cream scoop, melon baller, or a sturdy spoon to scoop out the seeds and stringy pulp. Word on the blogosphere is that you can clean and roast the seeds just like pumpkin seeds, but I haven't tried it.

I love my ice cream scoop for this.

5.  Place both squash halves cut side down in a microwave-safe dish (like a glass pie pan). Add about 1/3 cup of water to the dish. Microwave on high for about 7 minutes, then check it and continue to cook in 1-minute intervals as needed. When cooked, the flesh should be soft and easily pierced with a fork.

6.  Hold a squash half with a potholder and carefully use a fork to fluff the strands (works best if you pull the tines against the grain of the squash). Scrape the strands out into a bowl or cutting board.

How neat is that?

7.  Eat the squash as is, add some butter and Parmesan, or top it with a sauce. Spaghetti squash is one of those foods that can take on other tastes very well. Help it along by undercooking the squash just slightly, and then tossing the strands with the sauce in a pan over low heat for a minute or two. The sauce will latch on to the squash, and you'll end up with perfectly cooked strands.

Although many of the recipes you see for spaghetti squash treat it like pasta, I think it works better with Asian flavors. Like peanut sauce. My recipe below is the result of reading a lot of recipes and testing a few. Many recipes call for coconut milk, which I don't particularly care for, but if you like it you can replace half the water with it.

Peanut Sauce
Enough for one 2-1/2 pound spaghetti squash

Ingredients

1/4 cup peanut butter (creamy or crunchy, your choice)
2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp lime or lemon juice
1 clove crushed garlic
1/2 cup water
Sriracha hot sauce and/or crushed red pepper, to taste

Steps

1.  Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat over medium-low heat until bubbling and thick. Or, combine the ingredients in a microwaveable bowl or container and heat in 30-second intervals until combined. Add more water for a thinner sauce.

You can serve the peanut sauce hot or cold.

2.  Store any leftover sauce in the fridge for about a week. You may need to thin the chilled sauce with water before serving.

Combine your spaghetti squash, peanut sauce, and any veggies or proteins you like.

Spaghetti squash with peanut sauce and some stir fried chicken.

How do you like your spaghetti squash?

A Better Mug Cake

Friday's pudding post has had me thinking about dessert, so I thought I'd share another dessert recipe with you while we're on the subject.

If you've been anywhere near Pinterest, StumbleUpon, or any of the hundreds of cooking blogs out there on the internet lately, chances are you've encountered the mug cake. As fads go, this is one of the ones that you either love with all your heart, or you hate.

Taking a cue from the multitude of recipes and comments I've read, there seem to be two main problems with the standard mug cake: too eggy, or too oily. Most recipes use a whole egg for one little mug cake, so I can see how that would be overpowering. Oil adds richness to the cake, but too much is not a good thing.

After experimenting quite a bit with the mug cake and the mug brownie, I think I've created a pretty good recipe. Maybe not the best, but, as the title claims, at least a better recipe than the standard one floating around.

My first attempt was based on a mug brownie recipe that left out the egg altogether, thereby solving one problem, and I further decided to eliminate the oil by replacing it with plain nonfat yogurt. The results were edible, but the cake was gummy and a little too tangy for my taste.

For my second attempt, I surmised that a completely nonfat mug brownie probably wasn't ever going to taste that great. So I used just a tablespoon of oil in the batter, and it was better but still suffered from the gumminess problem many people have experienced with these cakes. It really needed a little bit of "lift" to improve the texture.

The recipe that I'm giving you here is the third variation, no eggs and no oil involved. I used just a pinch of baking soda to make it lighter and fluffier without egg. I also swapped out the oil for something better...peanut butter! The (odd? weird? interesting?) thing about this cake is that you don't really taste the peanut butter, but it adds that element of fat that you need to keep it tasting like cake. Sometimes I play it up by adding a dollop of peanut butter on top.

Chocolate Mug Cake
Serves 1

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp peanut butter
• Dash vanilla
• 4 tbsp flour (sometimes I sub instant oats for one or two tablespoons--the texture takes some getting used to, though)
• Pinch of baking soda (really, just a pinch will do!)
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 3-4 tbsp skim milk
• Toppings (optional)

Steps

1.  Start by adding the peanut butter and vanilla to a 12-oz microwavable mug. Microwave on high for about 30 seconds until the peanut butter is melted.

Add the peanut butter...

...and get it nice and melty.

2.  Add the flour, baking soda, salt, sugar and cocoa powder to the mug.

Dry ingredients next.

3.  Add 2 tbsp of milk and stir with a fork to combine, being sure to scrap the sides and bottom of the mug. Add more milk as needed until the mixture looks like cake batter.

Now is the time to indulge your cake batter
fantasies, without risk of salmonella.

4.  Place the mug in the microwave and cook on high for one minute. I always use a 12-ounce mug just in case, but this cake doesn't rise nearly as much as the ones that use egg in them.

Check the cake and continue to cook in 15-second intervals as needed, being careful not to overcook. Mine are usually done after a minute, although there's usually a small uncooked spot on the very top in the center. But since there's no egg in the batter, I don't worry about it!

Mug cakes are not the most photogenic food.

5.  Top the cake with a dollop of peanut butter or Nutella, sliced fruit, or whatever you like.

An attempted close-up of the texture.

My honest opinion: cake made in the microwave will never live up to "real" cake baked in the oven. That said, if you are going to make cake in the microwave, you don't have to settle for a gummy blob. Read recipes and comments, experiment, and see what happens.

So, what do you think? Have you tried mug cake? Do you have an even better recipe?