According to my ability to make a microwaved Potato Dauphinoise, one could say my microwave cooking skills aren't up to par.
However, for the sake of the famed microwave dish (depending perhaps, on your part of the world) currently gathering 138,249 fans on Facebook and climbing every minute, I've decided to see how good it is.
That's right, we've opened our microwave doors to the low-culture, low-brow and incredibly lazy recipe: We're road testing the 5 minute chocolate mug cake.
I've been both intrigued and confused by this notion. For one, whilst incredibly easy, part of me wonders that the goods, made not in a cake tin of reputable size and quality and instead produced within five minutes at the hit of a button, will lead to a sudden change in life to that akin to The Royle Family.
Perhaps though, I'm just perfect women's mag fodder and anything with an obscure ingredient or peculiar way of cooking it makes me feel that I've fulfilled the good-woman stereotype (or perhaps I just enjoy cooking, how does one tell?).
Our recipe, carefully extracted from Facebook (the snobbish part of me had to leave the room at this point) tell us to gather the following ingredients and so I pottered off to the corner-shop where all ingredients can be found (generally very dangerous):
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug
Method
Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
(..And this is where my microwave skills failed me, and I had to have a short investigation into the microwave quality. After we all decided it was probably the required 1000 watts, the cake mix - which tasted very cake-mixy - went into the microwave. With one minute left the smell of hot cocoa started pouring out, which is faintly terrifying if your microwave has an opaque door.)
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts (high). The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).
We found the cake to be a bit dry (perhaps because I left out some oil, or used a medium egg instead of a large), but the experiment was a bit of fun. Perhaps not something I'd repeat for edible results, although the next time you find me hungry at midnight the answer might have changed,
Image via Dave Haygarth's Flickr