It was cold last week – snowflakes actually fell for about 5 minutes – so we decided it was too chilly to go for walkies and that we should just go straight to tea and cake.  That and the fact that Sister X has recently had her kitchen renovated (by the Diet Coke Break men-children of previous blog post fame).  Myself and Sister Y thought it was high time we got to have a gander at it.  So we trotted round to where the posh people live and weren’t disappointed.  Very swanky indeed!  Sister Y and I, upon returning to our respective kitchens later that day, immediately began googling replacement kitchen doors and worktops.  Sister Y did mention something about tile paint – steady on girl – but it turns out that her eldest has a peculiar and very strong attachment to their current tiles, which are circa 1978!

As Sister X does not have an in-house bakery and we were desperate for cake, having not frequented any tea rooms for an outrageous number of weeks, I had the spiffing idea that we should make use of one of my Christmas presents – a Mug Cake cookbook.  What better way to experiment with messy microwave mug cooking than in someone else’s brand new kitchen?  Having flicked through, I was quite surprised by the amount of ingredients one is actually supposed to fit into the mug in order to make the cake, so I opted for a simple chocolate recipe which had the fewest.  Although few, the amounts of each still seemed rather excessive for one mug:

• 5 tbs plain flour
• 3 tbs caster sugar
• 2 tbs cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg
• 4 tbs chocolate spread (we only used 2)

I bagged up little ready-made mixes for us all and we duly made a horrendous mess on Sister X’s new island attempting to beat them all together in the mugs!  Then came the best part … Sister X let me play with her new microwave which is like something out of Star Trek – I’m easily pleased.

 

The recipe said to heat for 50 seconds on high but they took more like 90 seconds each to cook through.  They weren’t pretty but they were tasty – very dense (probably should have put the extra chocolate spread in) and very rich.  None of us could actually finish a mug full which is saying something – you know how we love our cake!  Sister X did admit to having had another go at hers later that afternoon but figured she’d subsequently burned enough calories attempting to clean the mugs, upon which the fruits of our labour were well and truly caked – pun very much intended!!