I love making mug cakes. I love how easy they are – no weighing, melting or creaming, just measuring and adding spoonfuls into a cup. Last night Mr Arabella Cooks and I fancied a quick dessert after our evening roast so I knocked one of these up. We stood with our noses pressed against the microwave door oohing and ahhhing at the magic of the rapidly rising pud and it’s gorgeously thick, intensely chocolatey smell. When they work these are as good as any fancy restaurant or dinner party fondant.  Overcook them however and they are disgusting – like rubbery cardboard. Every microwave oven (bizarrely) cooks differently, so you might have to make a couple before you discover the exact time it takes to achieve mug cake perfection in your own oven. My first attempt last night didn’t work.  The recipe I used called for far too long in the oven. The second one, though, after a few tweaks, was utterly gorgeous.

They don’t photograph terribly well. The feature picture here is essentially just a mug. Sorry about that. But cooked perfectly they taste divine. So get a dozen or so eggs in, find someone to sample the ones that don’t work (our two year old is very handy in that regard) and enjoy the research.

Serves two (or 1 greedy person)

Equipment:

• A mug
• Some measuring spoons (these are a really useful thing to have in your kitchen; dessert spoons all differ in size so to be really accurate you need these)

Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons of plain flour
• 4 tablespoons of sugar
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 3 tablespoons of milk
• 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil or melted butter (I use oil)
• 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla essence
• a  handful of dark chocolate pieces (I used Dr. Oetker dark chocolate chunks; chop up a small bar of chocolate if you don’t have any chips or chunks to hand)
• Optional – a teaspoonful of peanut butter

Method

1. Put the dry ingredients into the mug and stir with a fork
2. Add the milk, oil or butter and vanilla. Stir to combine
3. Add the egg and stir until you have a smooth, glossy batter with no pockets of flour
4. Stir in the chocolate pieces and if you’re going to use it put the teaspoon of peanut butter into the middle of the batter and scrape in the peanut butter using another teaspoon
5. Put the mug into the microwave. In mine, which is 900W, it takes exactly 1 minutes and 30 seconds to achieve fondant nirvana.
6. Let it cool slightly, then either eat it straight from the mug or run a palette knife around the edge and tip it out gently onto two plates. There should be a natural break in the middle where it’s still gooey, giving you two perfect melting middle chocolate fondant puddings. It’s delicious with ice cream, especially my raspberry ripple. Yum!