I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that part of the reason so many of us needed to switch to a keto diet was because of an insatiable love of sweets. I’ve made no secret of the fact that my Southern upbringing accustomed me to pancakes, biscuits & jelly, a parade of apple and pecan pies, blackberry cobbler, Mississippi Mud Cake, ooey gooey campfire s’mores, and platters of cookies. And usually you’d eat some of that right at the end of every meal – or at least you’d have a piece of cornbread with honey drizzled on it, right?

Or maybe that’s just me and that’s just how I got fat. But I’m betting some of my fellow ketopians can commiserate.

What if I told you that you could eat cake every day – and it’s a satiating meal in its own right, full of goodness and nutrition? And it’s perfectly portioned so you can’t gorge out. And there’s chocolate (chocolate optional).

Enter the mug cake.

Well, more precisely, this is one mug cake, multiple ways. As in – you can take the base recipe and customize it to change it to your favorite flavor. I’m going to include several different recipes that I love below, but I want to urge you to go hog wild and come up with your own customizations! Just imagine me as Marie Antoinette, screaming “LET THEM EAT CAKE” at all of you guys, except let’s put it in the context of me not being a rich aristocrat on my way to the chopping block and you guys not being impoverished peasants who are starving, okay?

Hold on, let me try again… I need a different pop culture reference here that doesn’t portray me as a hoity-toity snot.

This was a triumph.

I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.

It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

…

Anyway this cake is great

It’s so delicious and moist!

That’s better.

Base Ingredients

3T almond meal/flour

1T coconut flour

2T butter

1 egg

2T Torani sugarfree syrup (or sweetener + extract to taste)

1t baking powder

Melt your butter in the bottom of the mug. I zap it in the microwave for 20 seconds. Then add your dry ingredients – the almond and coconut flour and the baking powder. Throw in any additional mix-ins (we’ll discuss those below).

Add your egg last. Trust me on this one. If you plop your egg right down on the hot butter, it’ll start cooking… and that’s just something you don’t want to deal with, chunks of cooked egg in your cake. Ugh. The flours cool it down so it doesn’t instantly fry, lol.

Incorporate all your ingredients. I use a butter knife and stir until everything looks well and truly mixed. I especially make sure that there are no slimy egg trails tracking through the batter, because, again, you don’t want obvious bits of cooked egg in there. I cannot emphasize this fact enough.

Put your mug cake in the microwave and nuke it in 20-30 second segments until it is done.

PLEASE NOTE: this will vary with YOUR microwave. Be very careful the first time, and err on the side of caution. You do not want an overdone mug cake, yuck! The magic time for MY microwave is 50 seconds. Now that I know that, I just pop it in there for that time and it’s done. This will take trial-and-error on your part.

Another important thing to note is that the center of your mug cake may still look runny like this when it’s done. The only thing that’s really cooking in there is the egg, and they cook at such low heat that this cake will actually continue cooking after you bring it out of the microwave. You want it to look a little underdone when you pull it out. See how the edges look crispy and finished, but the center still looks moist? That’s perfect!

This is that same cake moments later, after I unceremoniously dumped it out of its mug and into a bowl to show you the innards. See? Solid! You can see the deliciously fluffy texture of it quite clearly in that photo.

Now, let’s talk flavors and ingredients.

If you’ve looked at any of my recipes, you know that I am a huge proponent for mixing flours. This is because my husband and I have to do keto on a budget. This blog is a hobby for me – a way to keep from going crazy by writing my thoughts – and I have a day job where I’m not a food blogger. Any recipes you see here were created first and foremost for us, and if we like them enough, I share them with you. So I try to cut costs wherever possible. Almond flour is quite expensive, at least in my book – but I LOVE the flavor and texture it gives when cooking with it. However, because of its price, I usually cut it with more inexpensive keto flours.

The coconut flour doesn’t really impact the flavor of the mug cake, but I never do more than a 3:1 ratio of almond:coconut flour because coconut flour sucks up moisture. You would have to find some other way to inject liquid into this cake if it had more coconut flour in it.

Flaxmeal is another thing I usually cut my almond flour with, and I’ve made flaxmeal mug cakes before, but ultimately I just don’t care for the texture as much. Flaxmeal is innately oily and chewy; if you like that you can definitely try a mix that incorporates it, but I think the 100% almond or 3:1 almond:coconut flour ratios make the truest, softest, fluffiest cakes.

Feel free to experiment – you should be fine if you keep to a total of 4T flours!

Now, as far as flavors go – this is one mug cake, multiple ways. So far I’ve made Chocolate Chip Cookie, S’mores, Snickerdoodle, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Vanilla, and Salted Caramel. I’m a self-proclaimed chocoholic, so Chocolate Chip and S’mores are undoubtedly my favorites (even though they are higher in carbs because of the actual chocolate content).

There are two ways to change up the flavors here. What I tend to do is just use different Torani syrups as sweeteners. I have a local World Market, and I buy the bottles when they go on sale for half off ($3.50 for a large size, woot!). We originally started using the syrups as ways to flavor our bulletproof tea, but I soon figured out I could cook with them (see my Cheesecake Fluff for a totally delicious example of flavoring desserts with them).

You can also use a combination of spices and other add-ins to change flavors. I’ve done both, and here are some of my favorite recipes:

Chocolate Chip Cookie

use base recipe, but make sure that you incorporate

2T Torani sugarfree Vanilla syrup (or French Vanilla)

1 square of dark chocolate, chopped (or half a serving of chocolate chips)

S’mores Cake

use base recipe, but make sure that you incorporate

2T Torani sugarfree S’mores syrup

1 square of dark chocolate, chopped (or half a serving of chocolate chips)

Snickerdoodle

use base recipe, but make sure that you incorporate

2T Torani sugarfree Cinnamon & Brown Sugar syrup (or Belgian Cookie)

a couple of dashes of cinnamon, straight from the shaker

Mounds / Almond Joy

instead of butter, use 2T coconut oil

2T Torani sugarfree Vanilla syrup (or French Vanilla… or chocolate maybe? I haven’t tried that one yet)

sprinkle of unsweetened coconut

1 square of dark chocolate, chopped (or half a serving of chocolate chips)

a few almonds, if going for Almond Joy

Chocolate Peanut Butter

use base recipe, but make sure that you incorporate

1T natural peanut butter – melt this when you melt the butter, so it’s pliable

1T cocoa powder

Please note that for some strange alchemical reason (dude, I don’t know, I just throw shit together), this cake gets GIANT and you probably need to set the mug on a saucer or risk a messy microwave. And it’s incredibly filling and has a higher fat/calorie content, so I’d share this one. Or store half to eat later.

So, let’s briefly discuss nutrition. The base recipe comes in at a whopping 424 calories with 40g of fat, 12g of protein, and 4g of net carbs. That essentially means that this dessert is an entire meal in its own right (well, if you’re a girl like me who doesn’t usually intermittently fast – most of my meals come up around 500cal). You could, of course, split it and have a more reasonable dessert. That’s up to you.

My husband doesn’t care for this recipe as much as I do, because he’s never really been a sweets eater and because he says it seems like I’m cheating when I eat cake for lunch. But let’s be real here. This cake is composed entirely of nuts, butter, and egg… and aren’t those things the cornerstone of keto? This ain’t my momma’s cake, made with white flour and sugar – this thing has substance and nutrition. And as long as I treat the add-ins with moderation (ie: I don’t go overboard on the damn chocolate), I feel like this cake can be a healthy part of the keto diet. Just make sure you keep into account the nutritional value of additional ingredients you incorporate into the base recipe!

I hope you like this recipe. Let me know if you come up with different winning combinations!

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