I am NOT a baker. I have tried repeatedly to make things from scratch and I always manage to mess them up no matter how stringently I follow the directions. I’m not sure why this is, but I’ve learned to accept it and just buy packaged mixes or ready-made cookie dough. C’est la vie.
However, several weeks ago, I came across a recipe in a magazine I was glancing at and it claimed to be an easy 3-minute way to make chocolate cake…in a cup…in the microwave! I was intrigued by this obvious “challenge” thrown to me by Michael Symon of the cooking channel. I was sure that nothing could be that easy, but in spite of my reputation as a professional baking disaster, I decided to try it out with my kids. If anything went wrong, I could just blame it on them, right? (as if anyone would believe that at this point) So this weekend, it was finally game time.
The Ingredients
1. Put butter and chocolate in a glass bowl (and then sneak a few of the extra pieces of chocolate for a pre-dessert snack)
2. Microwave for 1 minute on highest setting and stir until melted.
3. In another bowl, whisk together sugar and next 4 (or 3) ingredients.
4. Whisk in the melted chocolate mixture to create a batter.
5. Divide batter among 4 mugs (we ended up using 5 because there was extra, most likely because it was so runny).
6. Place mugs in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes on highest setting. Let cool 30 seconds. (we ended up having to cook for 4 minutes, probably because our batter was runny or because we had 5 mugs instead of 4, so just start out with the 3 minutes and work your way up from there if you need to, which you probably won’t since you know how to bake properly).
7. Top with whipped cream or ice cream and dive right in!
Clearly, I am not a gourmet chef and this project wasn’t pretty. I’m going to blame it on my kids for abandoning me when the going got runny tough. But, I assure you that the cakes actually tasted really good when they were nice and warm, straight out of the microwave. Yeah, I said it; MICROWAVE! True, the “molten chocolate” ended up on top instead of inside because it didn’t process correctly somewhere along the way, but it was yummy nonetheless.
So, if you are jonesin’ for a quick and easy cake fix anytime in the near future, try this one! It really did only take about 15 minutes total, and at least 5 of those minutes were spent trying to coax my kids back into helping me with the poo-esque batter mixture. And, if you do try this recipe, please send me your pictures showing how this should have really turned out! :) Enjoy!
