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Dear Reader,
The cookbook doesn't lie. Making a mug cake in the microwave does indeed work. It's a quick way to make a unique dessert and surprisingly the cake tastes great. This is high praise from me. I admit I'm a bit of a baking snob. If the last line in a cake recipe tells me to open the microwave door and pop the pan inside--gasp! I don't feel like I've put any love into it, or that the cake could possibly taste as good as a cake baked in the oven.
So when I was invited to try some recipes from the cookbook Mug Cakes: 100 speedy microwave treats to satisfy your sweet tooth, by Master Baker Leslie Bilderback, my expectations weren't very high, but I was wrong. I made the "Red Velvet Mug Cake" and the "Chocolate Mayonnaise Mug Cake." The cakes were cute and they tasted great.
Both recipes boasted they were fun and quick to make; simply measure and mix the ingredients into a mug and microwave for 1-to-2 minutes. I decided that since I was baking a quick 2-minute microwave recipe, I'd challenge myself to measure, mix and bake the mug cake in five minutes flat. Could I do it? Was I up to the challenge?
Obviously not, because it took me an hour and 35 minutes to make two mug cakes. They tasted very good and were worth the wait, but I had to wade through kitchen mayhem to finish them.
Both recipes used the same ingredients with just a couple of exceptions. So to save time, I decided to use the same measuring utensils for both recipes. "But here's the problem," as my six-year-old grandson likes to say, after you measure red food coloring you need to wash the teaspoon before you use it to measure anything else.
'Hurry, hurry, the 5-minute clock is ticking Suzanne,' so I turned the water on full blast, held the measuring spoon underneath it, and just like adding flour to a mixer that's whirling away on high speed, the red food coloring I was trying to rinse out of the measuring spoon, flew out of the spoon and landed on my shirt, on the tiles on the wall behind my kitchen sink, and then nestled into the groove of the beige colored grout. Red dye on light colored grout--'Hurry, hurry, Suzanne, before it stains,' but at that very moment the cat threw up on the carpet (Barry, my cat, had been munching on grass when I took him out for a morning walk. I remember thinking it was so sweet, he was eating organic.), and before I could attend to the green puddle on my light cream carpet, or the red food coloring splattered on the tile and grout, the telephone repairman rang the doorbell, and in hurrying to answer the door, I knocked over the flour and the container of unsweetened cocoa. Red food coloring, cat breakfast leftovers on the carpet, flour and cocoa on my kitchen counters and floor, and all over me--ding! Five minutes was long gone.
One hour and 35 minutes later as I was surveying the mess, I discovered that if you look hard enough, you'll find a few good things in every disaster. My phone was repaired, the guarantee that promised stains were easy to remove from my new carpet was true, and I discovered that with a little elbow grease, a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser sponge does indeed erase the memories of a red kitchen disaster.
The cakes tasted fabulous and I highly recommend Mug Cakes by Leslie Bilderback. I can't wait to make the cakes with my grandkids, and microwaving mug cakes will be one of the holiday activities when relatives come to visit this year. To see my mug cake creations, go to: http://www.emailbookclub.com/photo/cakeinmug.html
Be sure to enter the drawing. I have six copies of the cookbook for readers--but one has a little leftover red food coloring, flour and cocoa on the pages.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
AUTHORBUZZ: Fun, free books and meet authors. Ask questions, they'll reply and read samples from their books. Visit AuthorBuzz at: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader
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