Monday, December 8, 2014

One Great . . . small chocolate dessert

In the season of excess, it's hard to believe we might crave dessert. Sometimes, though, just a little bit of chocolate is what you need. Some of us don't like to have the temptation of a whole cake or a big batch of something.

That's when the mug cake comes in handy. It's a single serving of cake, made in a coffee mug. You can make it in a couple of minutes in a microwave. And it lends itself to endless experimentation.

Messing around with several recipes, I hit on the perfect combination: Nutella and raspberry jam. You can swap the Nutella for peanut butter, skip the raspberry jam. It's up to you. It's your very own personal cake, after all.

Chocolate Raspberry Mug Cake

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
5 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips
1 tablespoons Nutella (or peanut butter)
2 tablespoons raspberry jam (optional, or use another flavor)

WHISK the flour, sugar, cocoa and salt in a small bowl. Whisk in the egg, oil and Nutella (or peanut butter). Stir in the chocolate chips.

SPREAD about half the batter in the bottom of a large coffee mug. Top with the raspberry jam, then top with the remaining batter.

MICROWAVE on high (100% power) for about 2 minutes, until it's puffed up. Serve immediately, topped with a little whipped cream or vanilla ice cream if you absolutely insist.

YIELD: 1 serving. 




2 comments:

Sharon Schwenk said...

This wonderful sounding single serving has 1125 calories.626a

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the input, as always, Sharon. But I think that illustrates the difficulty in using nutrition analyses -- they can vary widely. I ran it using My Fitness Tracker and got 867 calories, not 1,125. That's still not an inconsequential number of calories, I'd agree. But treats are treats, something we have occasionally.