Thursday 29 September 2011

Mug cake!


Yeah, you heard it right! Not mud, and why call a cake a mud cake, I've always wondered? This is a Mug cake. What is a mug cake? A cake made in a mug! Simple. Its ideal to make when a chocolate craving strikes - for all it takes is 5 minutes!

'Any desert?' is a question frequently posed by the husband. Every time I've said a 'no' I feel I have let him down, terrible. Which made me look for the solution.

Chocolate always works, this mug cake is just the answer! Yummy, just like a rich fudgy chocolate cake. All you need are the a few basic ingredients and a basic microwave. Voila!



Here's the recipe (adapted from Not Quite Nigella)

Ingredients:

Dry:
4tbsp flour
5 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
1 tbsp baking powder
Pinch salt, if using unsalted butter
Wet:
1egg
3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp butter ( you can your regular cooking oil)

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. First & foremost, please make sure you have 2 mugs (or bowls, which is what I ended up using) which are microwave safe & are able to hold around 250ml of liquid. Else the cake might spill over while cooking.
2. Halve the dry ingredients, add into mugs and mix well.
3. Halve wet ingredients and add into mix. As for the egg, whisk it first, then halve and add.
4. Mix well, ensuring no lumps of flour are left in the mug
5. Microwave for 2-3 minutes (depending on how powerful your microwave is) on medium heat.
It should be cooked, but still a bit gooey too. Also, when you wait for it cool, it continues cooking. So make sure you don't overcook.

Thats it! Enjoy!

You can also add chocolate chips, chopped nuts or serve it with a scoop of icecream!






Tuesday 13 September 2011

Baking and Craft

Two of my favorite pastimes, the former having proven far more 'expensive' (at the expense of me putting on oodles of weight) I turned to the latter.

I decided to give quilling, a go.

First a bit on the former pastime. For the hubby's birthday, here is all that I baked.

Birthday macarons:

Birthday cake: Black forest





That was in June - some other baking also happened in between - Viennese Sables (not my cuppa chai - hence no post), many a brownie & cookie & cupcake & muffin, lots of waffles (technically not baking, but oh what the hell) and so on.

So that was that.

My pursuit for a suitable crafting hobby ended in zeroing on quilling. What is quilling - basically strips of colored paper are rolled and shaped and then further glued together to make pretty much anything you want.

Here's what I made - ok I don't own one of those SLRs which click the breath taking pics, so these have been taken with my phone - it gives one a rough idea.

















Night folks!