More cookies! More mugs!
June 24, 2023 12:26 PM
Remember my cookie in a mug post that I made a couple of months ago? Well, I still had some milk left over from another recipe, and even though this cookie requires no milk, it's pretty tasty to eat it with a glass of milk.
The last time I made this, I concluded that the wider the mug, the better. So I took out my huge Borgata mug, and I made the cookie in it. I cooked it for just 40 seconds, and then I even took it out and put it on a plate so it wouldn't keep cooking inside of the warm mug.
It was really good! I feel like this recipe is a winner! The bottom of the cookie was actually a tad undercooked, so I don't think I needed to take it out of the mug, but slightly undercooked cookies are pretty tasty in my opinion. I even made it two more times this past week!
When I went to make the cookie a second time this week, I realized that I had left my container of sugar at my boyfriend's place, so I ended up making this with brown sugar and powdered sugar. It wasn't bad, but I think white sugar is better here. I knew I could get by without the white sugar, but you know what, it's okay to have extra sugar. I know I'll use up the sugar eventually. It's not like it's expired chocolate syrup that's been sitting in my fridge for over 5 years.
So...I bought more sugar. And then I thought, let me switch things up and make a cake in a mug instead. Using the powdered sugar reminded me of the cinnamon swirl mug cake that I've made in the past, and I had a tiny bit of milk left, which is perfect for a little mug cake.
I just bought one of those bags of sugar from Aldi, which seemed perfectly fine, but later that day I noticed that there were grains of...something on my living room floor, and when I went to inspect it I realized it was the sugar. Huh. I went to pour the sugar from the paper bag into my sugar container and then I saw it. There was a hole in the bottom. 😱
It's fine though, I just had a bunch of sweeping to do, and I should probably do another sweep later.
Also, I started making the mug cake, and I realized it doesn't even call for white sugar! 🙃 It's just brown sugar and powdered sugar. Why did I buy extra sugar?!
...to make the cookie a third time. That's why. I'll never get tired of desserts in mugs.
Cookie in a mug
April 15, 2023 2:35 PM
I've made plenty of cakes in a mug before, but a few weeks ago I saw a video for a chocolate chip cookie in a mug. I love desserts in mugs! And I love chocolate chip cookies! I had to try it. And then I had to try it again. And again. And again.
Hey, I really like making meals for one. I can just keep iterating!
Attempt 1: The first one that I made actually didn't turn out so well. I used one of those Corelle mugs, and I found that it was a little too narrow. After cooking it in the microwave for a minute, it still seemed undercooked. So I cooked it a little longer. It still seemed undercooked, but when I started to eat it, I realized that the middle was way overcooked.
It was also way too sweet. I bought a milk chocolate bar and just crushed that into little pieces, but I definitely should have just gotten a bag of the classic semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Okay, so not great, but I could make adjustments. The video said to use a shorter, wider mug, and I just happened to have this cute little mug as free swag from work.
Attempt 2: Apart from the switch in mug, I also used less sugar. I bought a bag of dark chocolate chips, and I cut the brown sugar down to just a tablespoon.
Just coming out of the microwave, this looked much better. The top wasn't too goopy, and it settled into a nice cookie texture after I let it cool for a few minutes. But the middle was still really hard! I think 60 seconds was a little too long.
The sweetness level was good though, but I think it was a little too chocolate chip-y for me. I still didn't have the semi-sweet chips, and I also think using mini sized chips would have been better. (But I wasn't going to buy another bag of chocolate chips)
Attempt 3: Alright, this time I only cooked it for 50 seconds, and that definitely helped! I also only mixed a single tablespoon of chocolate chips (as opposed to two in my earlier attempts), but I still added a few on top once I had mixed everything together. Much much better cookie to chocolate chip ratio this time. But man, I need a better strategy for not overcooking.
Attempt 4: This time I cooked it for 45 seconds (but I really should have done 40), and then once I let it cool for a couple of minutes, I pulled it out of the mug and put it on a plate. I figured that being in the warm mug just kept cooking it longer, so I wanted to prevent that. I think it helped! And it allowed me to take a slightly different looking picture, which is a plus.
My latest attempt was certainly my best attempt yet, but it was still overcooked in the middle! I think I'll have to try something completely different for my next attempt. Maybe I'll use a much bigger mug.
For now, I'm going to take a break though. This recipe called for an egg yolk, so every time I made it, I accumulated an egg white. By the end of the week, I decided to just cook all the egg white and eat it with rice and some soy sauce. Honestly? It was pretty good. I just really like eggs.
Sweet things
March 26, 2023 11:10 PM
If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know that I'm not really a baker, or even just a person who makes desserts. I don't even make simple things like chocolate chip cookies or box brownies. But in my quest to get rid of everything in my pantry, I've hit the point where I have to start going through all my baking ingredients.
So I think it's finally time to start conquering my fear of dough.
Uhh, not bread dough though. Let's start with cookie dough. Can you believe that I had never made chocolate chip cookies from scratch before?! My sister has her own special recipe that everyone in my family uses, and they make cookies all the time. So I never really felt the need to make my own cookies. But I had some leftover chocolate chips from the last time my sister visited me and I wanted to use them up.
I looked into a few different chocolate chip cookie recipes, and I settled on the one from The Novice Chef. It seemed easy enough. I only really had about 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips, so I cut the recipe in half (except for the egg because I'm not about to just use half an egg). As I went to for the cookie dough balls on the baking sheet, it was kind of a mess. I have no idea how I was supposed to roll it up into a ball. It was all sticky so I just ended up plopping messy mounds of cookie dough onto the sheet. I was a little worried when I put them into the oven, but they turned out okay!
Just okay. Not amazing. I'll have to try a different recipe next time. Maybe my sister's?
So, I've made pancakes plenty of times before, but I usually stick to oven pancakes, because I find them so easy and convenient. I decided to try some more traditional pancakes though. I had some leftover ricotta from the various pasta dishes I've made recently, and I wanted to try ricotta pancakes, since the idea of them sounded so intriguing.
And man, it was a lot of work. And the pancakes turned out...also okay. I don't even think it quite makes sense for me to include them in a post about "sweet things" since they weren't that sweet and I didn't have any maple syrup, but whatever. I just sprinkled sugar on top of them as I was eating them. Close enough. I'll stick to the cinnamon swirl oven pancakes next time.
I'm realizing that I could have titled this post "things that involved a hand mixer" and I guess baking and hand mixers just go hand-in-hand! (thanks sister for being the reason I even own one in the first place!)
Anyway, I was browsing facebook when I saw a recipe for some really simple no-churn ice cream, and I thought it looked so good so I saved it. This Oreo ice cream only calls for three ingredients, and I already had some sweetened condensed milk!
This one actually turned out really well! It definitely has an extra creamy taste to it, which is different from most ice cream I get from the store, but I liked it a lot!
Finally, the only dessert I (used to) know how to make. Delicious as always. And I will keep making it at least a few more times, just to get through my expired cocoa powder.
An annotated chocolate mug cake recipe
November 21, 2021 4:34 PM
Original recipe - "The one" Chocolate Mug Cake
I don't really change too much, but this format is a little easier for me to read.
- Take out one mug, one 1/4 teaspoon, and one tablespoon.
- Scoop these ingredients into the mug and mix:
- 2 tablespoons of flour
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
- 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon of salt (Just fill the 1/4 teaspoon about halfway)
I like to scoop the dry ingredients in that exact order, to make sure I don't get my flour or sugar all cocoa powder-y. I mix using the 1/4 teaspoon.
- Pour these ingredients into the mug and mix:
- 2 tablespoons of milk
- 1 tablespoon of veggie oil
Once again, I mix using the 1/4 teaspoon. After you mix a little, you'll want to tap the teaspoon against the side of the mug to let out any powder trapped inside. You want to make sure everything is mixed as well as possible.
- Microwave the mug for 1 minute.
- Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
Or don't, because this is a not-super-sweet mug cake, and the inclusion of vanilla ice cream is only going to make it feel even less sweet. But it does make the cake look more aesthetic.
Mug cakes
November 12, 2021 7:26 PM
I've been really into mug cakes lately. They're easy to make, and I end up with just the right amount of warm dessert for myself. I really like Budget Byte's Cinnamon Nut Swirl Mug Cake (minus the nuts).
But man, for a "microwave cake", it's actually kind of complicated. I'm pretty sure I use every size measuring spoon I own plus an extra bowl, mix three sets of things, and use the microwave many times. So yeah, I needed to cut some of this out.
Budget Bytes has a few other mug cake recipes, and I wanted to try them out. I saw her post this Funfetti Mug Cake earlier this year, and I saved it for the next time I had milk I needed to use up. This was a lot easier. Like, I finished making it and I thought, "wow that was easy".
The taste? It was okay. It felt like something was missing though.
And then I realized that she doesn't put any salt in this recipe. How can you make a cake with no salt?! I made the recipe again a day later with a pinch of salt. Not the best, still not even close to the taste of that cinnamon mug cake, but better.
Okay, so I also made some hot chocolate a few days later, and I realized my cocoa powder expired over two years ago. It still seems fine, but I guess I should try and use it all up. I remembered that Budget Bytes has a chocolate mug cake recipe. I made this once while my sister had been staying with me and I remember feeling that it was pretty...average.
But I still need to use up this milk, and I also need to use up this cocoa powder, so I made that chocolate mug cake again. And this? This was even easier. This one doesn't have butter, so I didn't have to even use the microwave twice or grab a bowl. I also didn't bother with the dollop of peanut butter in the middle.
The taste was still pretty average though, and it definitely wasn't sweet enough. Maybe I've grown too much of a sweet tooth lately, but two teaspoons of sugar just did not feel like enough. So I decided to remake this again, but use a whole tablespoon of sugar. Definitely helped.
And that had that extra benefit of getting rid of a need for a measuring teaspoon. So this is so easy now. One mug, one 1/4 tsp spoon, one tbsp spoon. Use the 1/4 tsp spoon to mix everything. One minute in the microwave. That's it. I could make one of these every day.
Still, those two easier mug cakes don't beat the taste of the cinnamon swirl mug cake. Maybe I can tweak that one...