Quick cake break!

Jen here.

So, we’re all busy with summer and making school year plans and gardens!  We’ll, we’re trying to be busy with our garden out here, but our garden is all about improvement out here in the foggy San Francisco Bay Area.  Our corn is falling down, squash not getting pollinated and bean leaves being skeletonized by some voracious bug.  The dill I planted for summer pickling has become a wildlife habitat, hosting at least 5 butterfly caterpillars, and generations and generations of ladybugs (eggs, larvae, pupae and beetles) – which is absolutely wonderful, but it means I’m  not using my dill like I’d like to.  I’d much rather encourage the beneficial bugs.  But, we are harvesting beans – and that’s making me happy.

But, vegetables aren’t what this post is about today.  It’s about chocolate cake.  Fast chocolate cake.  Cake in 5 minutes, start to finish (unless it takes longer to get your ingredients together or you have small children helping).  Really!  We made this on Monday, and it was good.  I found this Five-Minute Chocolate Mug Cake in an article about studying chocolate.

Five-minute Chocolate Mug Cake
(Originally published in the June 10, 2009 edition of the San Jose Mercury News. Submitted by Eileen Fukunaga.)
Serves 1 to 2
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips, optional
Small splash vanilla

Put flour, sugar, and cocoa in a large, microwave-safe mug and mix well. Add egg, and mix thoroughly. Pour in milk and oil, and mix well. Add chocolate chips and vanilla, and mix again.

Place mug in microwave and cook for three minutes at 1,000 watts (“high on a 1,000-watt oven, lower setting for ovens with greater maximum wattage). Cake will rise over top of mug. Allow to cool a bit. Tip out onto plate, if desired, or eat straight from the mug. Pour a bit of cream over the top for an even more sinful creation.

A one-mug serving can easily be divided between two people.

We made one mug cake on Monday night, for our Family Home Evening treat.  We used one of our tall mugs (about 16-ounces).  We actually split it between the four of us and had a 1 tablespooon-cookie-scoop of ice cream (Häagen-Dazs vanilla).  One of the principles we’re teaching our family right now is “portion size, not desired size”).  It was plenty for each of us at the end of a long day.

08-15-09 Update:

We used this recipe for Bud’s day-of birthday cake, because we were going to have a big cake the next day.  Here are some assembly photos: