Weird World of Food: mug muffins

Digital journalist

Monday 1 October 2012

I am on a mission to explore the furthest reaches of the internet for the best, worst and weirdest recipes on offer online.

A ready to eat mug muffin

With so many different recipes for the latest food crazes, trends and strange dishes available on the web, my Weird World of Food will help you discover which ones work and which, quite often literally, fall flat.

This week begins with the mug muffin, a delicacy which I have chosen to make mainly because it’s late at night, the shops are closed and I want some cake. Now, the mug muffin seems to me to be the stuff of baking myth and legend. A delicious muffin which can be baked in the microwave in just three minutes sounds like the Holy Grail for cake lovers. I am sceptical that such a thing could even exist let alone work. However, that is exactly what the mug muffin recipe that I have found online promises, a moist, moreish cake, with a choice of flavours, which is prepared from scratch and ready to eat in just five minutes. Despite my scepticism, I decide to give the recipe a try, partly because I am intrigued but mostly because I still want cake. As I search the cupboards for a mug big enough to cook the cake in, the thought that this could be an exercise in futility does cross my mind, but this soon passes as, having mixed the main ingredients of self-raising flour, demerara sugar, drinking chocolate, milk and oil together, I am left with something that does actually resemble cake batter. Buoyed on by my initial success, I place the mug and its contents in the microwave and set the timer for three minutes. However, after just a minute, my muffin mixture erupts like lava spewing from a ceramic volcano, covering the mug and the insides of my microwave in a chocolately goo. It looks like all hope is lost. I am dreading the thought of what is lying in wait for me as I open the microwave door; a chocolate recreation of Pompeii, a charred brick of burnt cake, a pool of goo. However, I am pleasantly surprised when instead I am hit by the delicious, and completely unexpected, smell of something that could actually pass for a chocolate muffin! And, although the mixture has spewed over the edges of the mug, covering them in cake, the finished product still resembles a muffin. After impatiently waiting a few minutes for it to cool, I grab a spoon and dig in. Against all the odds, it is actually very tasty and moist, not a prize winning creation by any stretch of the imagination but a good cake nonetheless. Something which is as good eaten from its mug as it is spooned out and shared amongst friends with ice cream. So it seems the legend is true, it is possible to make a delicious chocolate muffin in the microwave in just three minutes. Who knew! If you would like to try making a mug muffin follow the recipe below. - 4 tablespoons self-raising flour - 4 tablespoons demerara sugar - 2 tablespoons drinking chocolate - 1 egg - 3 tablespoons of milk - 3 tablespoons of cooking oil - a mug - chocolate chips (optional) 1. Pour the flour, sugar and drinking chocolate into the mug and mix together 2. Break the egg into the mixture 3. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well 4. Put the mug in the microwave and cook on full power for three minutes 5. Wait until the muffin stops rising and sets in the cup 6. Allow the muffin to cool 7. Spoon the muffin out of the mug and eat To create different flavours of mug muffin remove the drinking chocolate from the recipe and replace it with another ingredient such as cinnamon, ginger or mixed spice. If you have got a weird recipe that you would like me to try email me. Alternatively, if you have tried making this recipe, why not let me know how you got on by leaving a comment in the box below. Happy baking!

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Weird World of Food: mug muffins

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