Five Minute Chocolate Cake in a Mug

Don't laugh. You know you want to make this yourself. That's a pretty tempting title and now you're intrigued, aren't you? Of course, you could have been one of the 2,394,042 people who received this recipe in an email forward and a message something along the lines of, "OMG you have to try this! It is SOOOOO cool and it really works!!" Normally when I get an email with a message that sounds like a chain letter, I delete it. But naturally, I was drawn to the recipe because I'm a sucker for chocolate, and especially chocolate that can be made into cake form in less than five minutes AND doesn't even require an oven. I'm all about simplicity. And somewhere deep inside, I secretly hoped this recipe wouldn't work. I don't need to be five minutes from a hunk of chocolate cake. It's not good for the waistline. But after trying this, I am sold. And I may need to invest in some pants with an elastic waistband.

Five Minute Chocolate Cake in a Mug

4 tablespoons self rising flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons Hershey's cocoa (regular or dark)
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoon oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
a splash of vanilla extract (optional)
cooking spray for easy clean up
1 large coffee mug or hot chocolate mug


Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add vanilla extract and coat the chocolate chips with flour (if using, this will prevent the chips from collecting on the bottom.), and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes in a 1000 watts microwave. Adjust time if needed. The cake will rise over the top of the mug a little, but don't be alarmed. Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

*snort* Like chocolate chips are ever optional. Whatever. That's funny. So anyway, I was chuckling to myself as I put this concoction together. I kept thinking that there was no way this would work out - it was just too simple! But as the ingredients gradually came together I realized this was starting to resemble actual cake batter. It was precisely at that moment that I knew I was in big trouble if this actually creates an edible cake. And did it ever. I am so in trouble. It's really, really good.

Don't you just want to jump through the computer screen and take a huge bite? Yes, you do. Because there is easily enough for two (or three) people to dive into this thing. I did coat the chocolate chips with flour but they still sunk to the bottom of the mug after cooking. And regarding the mug, I used the biggest one I have. It's probably 5.5" tall with about a 3.5" wide mouth. I'm just estimating here, but it's bigger than your run of the mill coffee mug. When it was baking, the cake rose up over the top by about an inch, but there were only those small drips down the side. And you'll see there is a mention of cooking spray in the ingredient list but no mention of applying said cooking spray to the inside of the mug before you add the ingredients. I think the spray would work, although I didn't use it and all I had to do was run a knife around the outside edge of the cake to loosen it enough for the cake to plop out (with the exception of the chocolate chips). I think I would apply the cooking spray, mix the ingredients in a separate bowl and then pour into the mug. That might work.

The texture of the cake was pretty spongy and not quite as moist as a box cake mix would be. The taste was good. Like, really good. For the minimal effort that goes into the recipe, the taste delivers tenfold. No, it's not Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker, but it works well in a pinch. If you need a quick chocolate fix or you have a birthday girl/boy coming over on short notice, whip this up. You can even throw on some icing and pop a candle in the top. Make it. You know you want to. I'll even share my elastic waistband pants with you.

Grilled Tuna with Tomato and Cucumber Salad

Man, talk about a summer recipe. Everything about this dish screams sun and outdoors grilling and skimpy bikinis. The Husband especially screams about that last part.

Grilled Tuna with Tomato and Cucumber Salad

TOTAL TIME: 25 MIN SERVINGS: 4

Ingredients

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 1/2 pounds tomatoes, cut into 1/2-inch dice
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 large cucumber—peeled, seeded and sliced crosswise 1/4 inch thick
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup torn basil leaves
1 1/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon hot water
Four 6-ounce tuna steaks
2 teaspoons dried oregano

Directions:

Light a grill. In a large bowl, whisk the olive oil with the red wine vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes, scallions, cucumber, red onion and basil and toss to coat. Refrigerate the salad. In a small bowl, whisk the mustard with the balsamic vinegar and blend in the hot water. Season with salt and pepper. Brush the tuna steaks with olive oil and season with salt, pepper and the oregano. Grill the tuna over a hot fire until lightly charred on the outside and rare inside, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to a carving board. Mound the tomato salad on plates. Thickly slice the tuna steaks and transfer to the plates. Drizzle the tuna with the balsamic dressing and serve.

And in addition to this being really good, it's pretty healthy, which is a key factor in what we've been eating lately. We got the tuna steaks frozen at Target and the directions on the package tell you everything you need to know about cooking them. Fish isn't scary, it's tasty! Embrace the fish, people. The thing about tuna, however, is that it's best cooked rare to medium-rare. So far, we have been mostly unsuccessful in getting the fish to that level. We always overcook, and part of it is that I always say, "That looks a little too raw for me in the middle; why don't you cook it for about another two minutes," and then when it comes off the grill it's always cooked all the way through. I've got to remedy that. And tuna steaks do not taste anything like tuna from a can. It's completely different and if done right, not nearly as fishy. Good fish shouldn't taste overly fishy anyway.

The tomato salad in the recipe would be good as a side item all by itself. Paired with the fish it just really completes the whole recipe. I halved the recipe for the salad and only cut two slices of onion to chop up. A whole onion is a lot for this recipe, and we're not huge onion people. I believe I used the full amount of mustard-balsamic glaze to go on top of the fish and it wasn't too strong, but you do have to be careful so as not to completely cover up the taste of the fish all together.

This just really came out well. We would definitely have this again!

Extra Recipe #2 - Savory Seafood Penne

I get recipes from a lot of different places. In fact, to compile the original list of recipes for this blog I searched far and wide on the 'Net to look for new and interesting foods to cook. You just never know what's out there. The Husband's healthy eating quest has now added Men's Health magazine to our list of recipe archives. Everything we've eaten has turned out really well, and I have decided there is one single solitary reason for this: the recipes are made for dudes, by dudes. Mario Batali and Wolfgang Puck aside, most guys don't do much cooking. That either resides with their female counterpart if they're married or co-habitating, or they subsist on take-out and mom's leftovers. A man's crowning achievement in the kitchen sometimes results in a pile of Velveeta nachos with a jalapeno garnish. He's overjoyed at what he has accomplished while you, his dutiful wife/girlfriend/women of his harem, are aghast that one would consider routinely defiling their body with such a greasy mess and angry that dinner plans now most certainly do not include a romantic trip to Chez Frou Frou.

Oh, who am I kidding. I love nachos. Furthermore, that was a gross generalization of men which is unfair considering the Husband's kitchen ability. I can entrust him with just about anything in the kitchen and he can whip it up.

So what I'm saying is that Men's Health almost has to make their recipes fool proof for those men out there who don't know the difference between a rolling pin and hole in the ground. And the hilarious thing about this magazine is that they even include pictures of the ingredients! When it says, "1 cup chopped tomatoes," you will see a picture of a tomato right above that instruction. Same for shrimp, pesto, Gorgonzola, and spinach, which all go into this recipe.

Savory Seafood Penne

2 oz Barilla Plus penne pasta
14 medium precooked, peeled shrimp
2 tbsp crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
3 cups chopped baby spinach
1 tomato, chopped
2 tbsp chopped walnuts
3 tbsp ready-made pesto

Directions
1.If you're using frozen shrimp, defrost them by running warm water over them. Cook the pasta according to package directions; drain and transfer it to a large bowl. Add the shrimp, cheese, spinach, tomato, walnuts, and pesto, stirring well to help wilt the spinach and mix in the pesto.

And that is all there is to it! Boil the pasta and then throw everything in a big bowl together. Can't be any more straightforward than that - love it! And it turned out really well. A few things I did differently: I made my own pesto when it calls for jarred stuff. I really prefer to know exactly what goes into my pesto - basil, pine nuts, parm, garlic, olive oil - and what I make probably has less fat than store bought pesto. Also, shocker, but I eyeballed a lot of the ingredients. I didn't exactly measure out the cheese or the spinach or the pesto. Don't act like you're surprised. If you've read any of my other posts you know that's pretty much common place for me. Finally, there is no mention of par boiling the shrimp. It calls for precooked, frozen shrimp, which is what I used, but I still wanted mine to have a little more doneness to them, and I didn't trust the hot pasta to cook the shrimp enough to my liking. So when I drained the pasta, I reserved the pasta water and dropped the thawed shrimp in there for about two minutes, stirring often. They pinked up and curled so I knew they were done. Throw it all into a bowl, toss well, and voila.




I've been pretty impressed with the recipes that have come from Men's Health magazine. I'll try to post some in the near future. If this streak continues, they'll have a better succession rate than Southern Living's recipes.

Extra Recipe #1 - Whole Wheat Bread

As part of the healthy eating we've been doing, we are only eating whole wheat/whole grain bread. It's healthier and, I think, tastier than white bread. White bread is all the Husband and I ate when we were kids - but didn't everyone? There may be some crunchy granola kids out there whose parents only fed them organic soy beans and tofu smoothies, but not us. We ate white bread and we loved it. We had no idea it wasn't the best thing for you to do, like riding on the handlebars of your friend's bike while not wearing a helmet and then getting scratched and scraped all over when she crashed into a blackberry bush. But anyway, we ate white bread and did crazy things and we all survived.

But now we see all of these healthy foods come out with a huge emphasis on whole grains and how they're so much better for your body. And something I don't understand is that whole grains are the original form of these little buggers that haven't been refined. Once the grains are refined, they're used for white bread. So why did everyone go through all that trouble to remove the husks and refine these grains to turn them into white bread? Why weren't they just left in their original form? It would have been much less work.

So, armed with this information we are now eating whole wheat/grain breads. They're a little expensive at about $3.50/loaf and the loaves are smaller than what you'll get for a loaf of white. We were in a new Kroger in town recently and found this brand of flour:

First of all, it says organic - the magic word that makes everything healthier, right? Ehh, not so much, but this isn't a post about organic vs. non-organic food. Anyway, this whole wheat flour sounded like the perfect excuse to make my own bread. Plus, there was a bread recipe on the package which was reason enough to make it. Recipe to come soon.

The recipe indicated it would be about two hours to make the bread from beginning to end. This was somewhat bad timing because I didn't begin this process until about 7:45pm, but I figured 'what the heck.' This dough called for yeast, which was something I haven't used in a while when I make bread. I've been using a bottle of light beer for the yeast, which actually really works well. Corona has been my beer of choice. The only problem with using beer as yeast is that the bread really develops that yeasty beer taste after a few days. You have to eat it quickly or it will start to ferment. You don't want that.

The dough went into the oiled pan and as I searched in vain for a warm place in our drafty positively air tight, lovely 75-year old house, I suddenly remembered our pseudo laundry room right off of the kitchen. I plopped the bread pan on top of the dryer, laid a damp cloth over the bread, set the dryer for 40 minutes, and went off to watch TV. Foolproof, right? Well, the dough did rise but not quite enough. The recipe called for it to double and it was probably another 40 minutes from completely being doubled, but at this point it was approaching 9:30 and I knew it still had 45-50 minutes to bake. That was probably the downfall of this whole experience - the fact that it didn't rise all the way. Must be a better steward of time next time I do this.

I also put some sesame and sunflower seeds on top of the dough before it went in the oven to emulate the store bought brands. Next time I may try to bake those into the bread because when it came out of the oven, the seeds and nuts hadn't adhered at all. When I inverted the bread onto the cooling rack, all of the seeds and nuts fell off onto the counter top. Lesson learned. It absolutely smelled heavenly, though! I immediately cut it into slices to let the heat escape so I could store it and get to bed - it's about 10:30pm by now and I'm fading fast. The Husband worked late and had just arrived home when the bread came out, so he was the first to try a piece. It was good but kind of dense. The full rise definitely would have prevented that.

I do want to try to make this bread again, though. I'll do a few things differently: full rise, seeds and nuts in the bread, and mix in less flour even if it's really sticky. It called for an initial 2 cups of flour but up to 2-3 more to add in to the final dough. I used a little more than 5 because the kneading process was becoming a sticky mound on my cutting board. Thank heavens for my bench scraper or I would have been totally lost. This was a good first attempt and I'm going to give it another shot.

Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Basil, Olives, and Fresh Mozzarella

This dish made me think of summer. It's light, doesn't require lots of cooking time and would be perfect with fresh ingredients from the farmer's market. It was really a hit. We did add a few extra items, which I'll get to, but the recipe in its original state would be so good for a light, summer dinner.

Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Basil, Olives, and Fresh Mozzarella

Ingredients
2 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes (about 6), chopped
3/4 pound salted fresh mozzarella, cut into 1/4-inch cubes, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup halved and pitted black olives
4 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
1 pound spaghetti
1/2 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced

Directions
In a large glass or stainless-steel bowl, combine the chopped tomatoes with the mozzarella, basil, olives, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the spaghetti until just done, about 12 minutes. Drain, add to the tomato mixture, and toss.

Heat the oil in a small frying pan over moderately low heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Pour the oil over the pasta and toss again.

Like I mentioned above, we added a few extra ingredients to increase the bulk and protein in this dish. First we did whole wheat pasta to get the good, healthy grains. We added some shrimp, thawed from the freezer, and some sliced and pan-cooked prosciutto. Maybe we're just conditioned to seeing large portions, but I don't think the original recipe would have filled us up for dinner. Maybe I'm wrong. Either way, the extra goodies tasted great and were a nice addition.

Tomato, mozzarella and basil mixture.

For the prosciutto, I found it sliced in the local grocery store. I chopped up two thin slices and cook them in a pan with a little olive oil along with the oil and garlic in the last step of the directions. Oh, and the olive oil. We halved this recipe, and even then we most certainly didn't use the whole amount of olive oil to pour over the pasta in the last step. That's a lot of olive oil, and I can understand using that if you need to slick up your insides to get rid of a hairball or something, but I don't think normal people (myself and the Husband) need that much oil floating around in our dinners. We did a fraction of that, and while we didn't have much of a sauce, it still was fine.


Another thing we did was attempt to warm the pasta for a few minutes before we ate. We drained the pasta, added the tomato mixture, along with the mozzarella, and put it on low heat while the prosciutto-garlic mixture cooked. In retrospect, we should have reconsidered what happens to cheese when you heat it up - it melts. And gets really stringy, mozzarella especially. So when we removed it from the heat we did have hot pasta, but we also had a mass of melted cheese goo in the bottom of the pan. Not quite what was supposed to happen. Maybe next time we'll just prep everything faster.


But even with the melty cheese, it was really good. See for yourself.

Finished product, including shrimp and prosciutto.