Last night I baked up a few cake layers, and my love - who swears, "I don't like dessert" - oh so casually asked, "...Hey, are you gonna level those cake layers tonight?"
It was very cute, but I don't level cake layers until I'm just about to fill and frost them, so he was out of luck. Except, he lives with a baker, and there's always time and ingredients for mug cake!
Mug cake is essentially a single serving of warm cake that you make in a mug in the microwave. It takes about 10 minutes, and it's just enough to satisfy a fresh-baked-goods sweet craving.
I made some Rosemary Caramel sauce a week or so ago because our rosemary plant was on it's last legs before winter, and because - why not?
People seemed to be very into this idea on the face-gram, so here's to a quick blog post!
Happy Baking!
Ingredients/Supplies
1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons AP flour
2 Tablespoons brown sugar (light or dark)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt
2 Tablespoons butter, melted (salted is fine, just don't add the salt above)
1/4 cup milk, warm
1/2 teaspoon (or a splash) of vanilla
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Microwave safe mug, ideally w. straight sides (if you want to double the recipe make sure you use an oversized latte mug)
Whisk
Small mixing bowl or 2 cup measuring cup
Microwave safe measuring cup(s)
Measuring spoons
Small dish
Spoon
Microwave
Directions
Whisk all the dry ingredients together in a small mixing bowl or 2c measuring cup: 1/4c + 2TB AP flour, 2TB brown sugar, 1/4tsp BP, 1/4tsp cinnamon, and a pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter).
Warm 1/4c milk in the microwave, then melt 2TB butter, and combine the two. (If you don't want to warm the milk, melt the butter, then very slowly pour a little milk at a time into the butter an stir - this is the process of tempering the butter. If you pour cold milk into melted butter all at once, the butter will seize and no longer be melted.)
Pour your milk/butter combo into your dry ingredients, and whisk to combine.
Mix 1TB sugar and 1/4tsp cinnamon in a little dish.
Place three large spoonfuls of batter into your mug, then sprinkle about 1/3 of your cinnamon sugar on top. Repeat. Then spoon the rest of the batter in and cover it with the last 1/3 of your cinnamon sugar.
Microwave for 60-90 seconds. If after 60 it's still a little loose/liquidy looking on top, give it more time. At 90 seconds stick a cake tester or toothpick in the middle. If there is no batter on it it's done. If there is batter, give it another 15 seconds and check again, etc. (If you're doubling the recipe it may need up to 2 minutes).
LET IT COOL BEFORE YOU TRY TO EAT IT OR YOU WILL BURN THE S**T OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.
For the Rosemary Caramel Sauce, use this base recipe but make the following adjustments:
Before doing anything else in the recipe, just barely bring your 8oz heavy cream to a simmer with 2 sprigs of rosemary (just til bubbling at the edge, not in the middle), then immediately remove it from the heat, cover it, and let it sit for 30-60 minutes. Remove the rosemary and strain the cream (assuming you care not to have small rosemary/twiggy bits in your sauce). This will be the cream you add to the caramelized sugar when making your sauce.
Nix the vanilla bean.
You can cut the recipe in half if you don't want to have too much leftovers in your fridge, but given how long caramel sauce lasts, that would be mildly insane.