Mug Cake--Instant Gratification

Do you ever have a time when you're just plain relaxing, maybe knitting or reading or watching television and without warning, the munchies attack?  Especially the sweet munchies? In my house, that thought entails a hopeful trip into the kitchen. I open the frig to see if there's anything sweet in there. Nope. I open the double doors to the pantry and scout out the offerings. Nothing appealing. If that craving also includes chocolate, which is so often the case for me, I'm double stumped. And no--I don't want to get into the car and go to the grocery store. So I pick my knitting back up and try to take my mind off of my sweet-tooth. It doesn't always work.

As luck would have it, a friend told me about this instant mug cake that was beyond good and so easy to make. I doubted it could satisfy a chocolate longing, but how would I know unless I gave it a try.

So it was that the very day I did my grocery shopping and picked up the ingredients for the mug cake, that I came home and got out a big bowl and a wire whisk. I dumped the entire contents

of an angel food cake mix into the bowl. Right on top, I dumped the box of chocolate fudge cake mix. Then I sat myself down and gently wire whisked the two mixes until they became one. I'd say about 2-3 minutes to get everything mixed well.

Now comes the fun part.

I put 3 Tablespoons of that mix into a coffee mug and added 2 Tablespoons of cold water. I grabbed a fork and mixed it well. It turned sort of foamy, like it has soap in it, but of course it was just the egg whites bubbling up.

I set it in the microwave for 45 seconds. 
The recipe calls for 1 minute, but my new micro is so powerful I've had to cut the time on everything or I end up with burnt offerings.

When the micro beeped, I removed the mug. Sure enough. There was a cute little cake sitting in the bottom. I ran a knife around the edge and moved it into a custard cup. It came out easy and clean. I thought it seemed a bit plain looking so I took some frozen non-dairy topping from the freezer and scooped out a Tablespoon full and pretended it was ice cream. Then my tummy was happy. I think yours will be too. The rest of the mix went into a plastic zip lock for the next time I get "the craving."


Additional info:

You can use any kind of regular cake mix you want; I just chose chocolate. Mom used to make chocolate angel food cake back in the day before cake mixes ever graced the grocery shelves. This cake reminded me of that. She generally frosted that cake with chocolate mousse, but I had no desire to get that fancy. I liked my pretend ice cream, but you could easily use the real thing--or just pour chocolate syrup over the top. Or caramel. Or anything that sounds good to you.

This is so simply to make that your older grade school kids could whip up a mug cake after school. Just be warned that they might eat more than one. Or two.

Why I Hate Picnics

As a kid I loved picnics. It was a chance
to run free and no worries about getting
dirty because in this one instance, it was
alright with mom.

My family loved picnics. At least that's what I grew up thinking because we had so many of them. Sometimes it was just our little family headed off to Carlton Lake or Nearstrand Woods, both within spitting distance of the rural Minnesota community where I grew up. Many times it was a combined family function, what with mom's three sisters and all their offspring--plus gram and gramps--crowded around the many tables set on the grassy lawn just outside the back door of Aunt Aimee's big white farmhouse. There were other times, too, when my folks took we three girls off to visit a distant relative and rather than eating at a restaurant along the way, we'd stop at a park and mom pulled all manner of good things to eat out of our car's trunk.

Our small Methodist church had a lot
of picnics, usually right after church. I thought
nothing of picnicking in my Sunday clothes. I'm the
tallest of the two kids.

Picnics were fun. They were filled with the sights of sounds of nature. They often included our abundant cousins who were like brothers and sisters to us because we saw one another so often. The picnics were casual and easy because all we three girls had to do was sit on the proffered chair, bench, or blanket, eat ourselves into oblivion and then play tag or go for a swim or anything else we could think to do before it was time to pack up and head home.

Hubby is reclining on the grass; all
others are either immediate family or
cousins.

And then I grew up. And got married. And it didn't help that my husband came from the biggest picnicking family I've ever known. Every single weekend, off to a local park, sit on the grass, converse with extended family, and do the same things everyone does at a picnic--gab and eat.

It was during those first married years that the awful truth hit me. Someone had to do all the planning, the cooking, then pack the food as well as dishes, utensils, blanket, napkins, drinks, and make sure there was ice for the cooler. That someone was always me. I was in my early twenties when I realized that picnics were fun only for kids and men--because they had to do nothing but eat and laze around a horseshoe pit or the playground while all the ladies scraped leftovers into a garbage bag, repacked the dishes, now dirty, and hauled all of that, plus the leftovers, home so they could be either washed or put away.

Odd that I despise picnics yet
absolutely adore camping. To me
they are not on the same plane.

I had grown to hate picnics. Before I'd been married many years, I'd flatly refused to go on them. I didn't mind the family getting together in a park or the beach or even some lovely wooded area,  just as long as food wasn't involved. And even though my much-loved hubby still thought picnics were great fun, I readily agreed to attend them only as long as he did every bit of shopping, prepping, cooking, cleaning up, etc. Do I have to tell you that family picnics quickly disappeared from our life?

I thought that was a good thing. I still do.

Wearin O The Green

When I was in the 6th grade, I dyed my hair green. Now try to envision a small grade school in rural Minnesota where each class consisted of so few kids that we could actually get around to talking to everyone in our class during the lunch hour. So it was that a few days before St. Patrick's Day, we girls decided it would be fun to have green hair. That way, if there was nothing else green on our bodies, at least we wouldn't get pinched.

Now I don't know where that "pinching" if you didn't wear green began, but the kids in my class took it seriously and were only too glad to carry out the "rules." Not only that, but I got pinched hard--by nearly everyone who remembered to wear green. Funny thing was, we were a mix of Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans. We were ignorant where Irish rules came into play. And while many did remember to wear green, I was never one of them.

Thus it was that the night before the "pinching" day, I got the bottle of food color out of the kitchen cupboard and set about dying my blond locks green. I wasn't sure how much to use but I'd seen mom add just a drop or two to the things she cooked up, so I figured if I wanted to color a whole head of hair, I'd need quite a bit. So it was that I filled my hand with shampoo and then drizzled the green color all over it. The other girls in the class had informed me that it would wash right out so I wasn't concerned about using too much. They'd also informed me it wouldn't actually turn green, just sort of green. I  can now dispose of that lie. When you are blond, your hair turns vivid green. Worse yet, it stays green for weeks and weeks. Suffice it to say, I never did it again.

But that wasn't the worse part of the story. The next day I went to school expecting to see a whole lot of green hair amongst my classroom friends. Not so. There were only four of us with green hair. The other girls had mistakenly asked their mother's permission and been refused. Considering that I believed it would wash right out, I didn't ask permission. I just did it. To this day I'm still amazed that my parents didn't restrict me to the house. I guess they thought letting me go to school looking like something out of a horror movie would be a good lesson.

It was.

Now try to envision a natural blond with stick-straight, thick hair. That was me. And after the dye job it was still stick-straight, still thick, and stuck out all over the place--sort of like a spiky green halo around my face. Except that nothing about it looked angelic. I walked to school knowing the rest of the girls would look just like me so I figured I'd have company in the wearin 'o the green department and even better, this would be the year I wouldn't get pinched. Not once. I will admit that we got attention. Our teacher questioned us and then sent us to the Principal's Office. But we didn't get kicked out of school. I guess green hair wasn't a big enough offense.

I washed my hair four times that night. Still green. I continued washing my thick mop every night, multiple times. Still green. Oh, the deep color did fade, but it didn't go away. Not for a long time. That food coloring dye is powerful stuff. More powerful than the genuine hair dye I used later in my life. If they made food color in natural blond, I would have used it because it lasted almost forever--far longer than the "real" hair dye stuff.

After two weeks of green hair, mom finally took pity on me and sent me to the beauty shop. The operator looked at my hair and asked what happened. She laughed when I relayed my story. Because my hair was so thick, she had to thin it first, then cut it into a really short bob. That took care of most of the leftover green. The rest slowly faded away, but it took a long time.

Now that I think about it, I ought to drop the food color people a note, telling them how long lasting their colors are. Especially the green. But then I'd have to tell them how I know and it's not a story I feel like telling again.

So this month I'm wishing you an early Happy St. Patrick's Day-- from someone who isn't the slightest bit Irish but wants to make sure there's no "pinching" on March 17th.