Sate your afternoon sugar cravings with a dead-easy chocolate cake recipe that only requires hot chocolate mix, flour, an egg, cooking spray, and oil (all stuff you've got in your pantry anyway). Grab the biggest microwavable coffee mug you've got in your cupboard, and cover the inside with cooking spray. Mix up four tablespoons of flour and nine tablespoons of hot chocolate mix, then throw in three tablespoons of water, three tablespoons of oil and one egg. Once it's thoroughly mixed into an even batter, microwave the whole shebang for three minutes on high. Watch how high it rises from the cup in the video below:Click to view When you hear that BEEEP of completion, you'll have yourself a piping hot, single-serving cake in a cup. In the name of research (ahem), I gave this a try myself this afternoon, and the result was—well, not the best cake I've ever had. Actually, it was kind of gross. The texture much less cake-y than one would expect and much more gummy than you'd ever want. I also made the mistake of using some fancy-pants hot chocolate mix from Jacques Torres back in Brooklyn that clearly wasn't meant to be microwaved with an egg. That said, I'm going to give this a try once I get ahold of some plain old Swiss Miss and see what happens—the result was indeed instant, hot, chocolate cake, and even the worst chocolate cake is better than no chocolate cake. See also no-knead bread and omelets in a bag for more wacky DIY recipe shortcuts, and hit the link below for more cake-in-mug details.


Make Cake in a Mug [Wired How-To Wiki]