This is just a temporary thing... I'll probably do a few and then stop for good, but these are just in case I ever want to "review" my posts.
Click here to see the original post.
Normally I would have you click on this post's title but I find it kind of a pain when I want to see comments or comment on someone's blog and I can't click on the title because it takes me somewhere else, so this time I decided to embed the link in the post, not "on top" of it.
If you know what I mean.
So,
how did I like the microwave mug cake?
I didn't.
It was
horrible!
Dry, rubbery, not at
all sweet, even though I'd added an
extra tablespoon because I had tasted the batter and gone, "ah, not quite right - doesn't taste very sweet to me" and besides, I was making it for a little girl, so I knew she would want it sweet.
Good thing she liked it, because I sure knew I didn't.
When I told Mom she told me she'd never found a recipe she liked - they always turned out to be dry and not very good.
What I wanted was
moist. What's a cake - even a mug cake - if it doesn't have a bit of moisture to it?
Same goes for brownies. Can I advise, if you're going to make it from scratch, save yourself the trouble and just get Ghirardelli's mix? It's
delicious! In fact, it's basically the same recipe I used when I would make brownies from scratch. And no I'm not being paid - this is 100% my own opinion. It's moist, flavorful, and sweet, with pockets of melted chocolate (chips) here and there. Mmm, makes me want some. I used to not like brownies, but now I do. Good ones, that is.
Not ones
some people I know make. Wouldn't touch some of those with a 10' pole and that's saying a lot.
I'll eat mostly everything.
Mostly.
There are a few exceptions, like badly-made - or just plain made - eggs. I don't really like eggs, unless I have bacon to go along with it, to drown out the taste. Sometimes I'm in a mood for eggs, but mostly not. Unless I'm really really hungry and that's once in a blue moon because I can just make myself something.
So, about the microwave mug cake, if I can stop straying from the path like I tend to do.
There I go again.
That kid will eat
anything I make and pronounce it good, but I'm a little bit more picky. This tasted vaguely familiar to some brownies I've tasted before, see above. Except mine wasn't as sweet, which made it all the more horrible.
If the bad brownies I've had before pale in comparison to this, something's not right.
What's not right?
Here's a list of aaaaall the things wrong with the recipe I've been discussing.
- No sweetness
So it calls for three tablespoons of white sugar. I put in four. Still didn't work. I put in 1/2. Still didn't work. It wasn't bitter, per se, it just wasn't sweet. How to fix it: I would say get a better recipe, but if you don't have any idea where to look, I'd say America's Test Kitchen because Mom recommended one of their mug cake recipes to me and I have yet to try it but if Mom recommends it, how can it go wrong. But if you don't want a different recipe, try adding 6-7 tablespoons of sugar. Sound like a lot? Wait until it's cooked!
(What's the saying? "Don't judge a book by it's cover"? In this case, "don't judge the sweetness by the dough")
- No dome
It was more like upside-down flan than a cake. It just went down. It sagged in the middle, the opposite of me. Just kidding, no more jokes. haha. How to fix it: to tell you the truth, I absolutely have no clue. Cook for less time? I wish I knew. I'm not a cook, so LMGTFY. Click it. It won't harm you. Maybe get some laughs out of you, but that's about it.
- No moisture
This was like eating flour and water, only harder. More like eating dough. Dough that isn't sweet. I don't know, it was so unlike anything I've ever tasted that I can't find anything to compare it with! So what was wrong with it? It was that you had to use your saliva to break it down. Mug cakes are supposed to break down and almost seem to melt in your mouth! You're not supposed to do the work! How to fix it: Try adding some water to it. I don't know how much, and I don't know if this will work, but when I read the thing about mug cakes in the America's Test Kitchen recipe (hopefully I'll have time to try it and write about it before 2016 - but don't hold me to it), they talked about how all mug cakes they came across were dry. I said to myself, "Exactly!" so they advised (if I remember correctly) adding some water to it. Since this isn't a very big mug cake (though big enough that you can't use a 7 oz. mug, you need something more like 12 oz.), use 2+ tablespoons of water and stir thoroughly before putting it in the microwave. Try it out and see how you like it. If it's still dry, add another 2 or so tablespoons, depending on how dry it is. Practice makes perfect, even if it means wasting ingredients. Try using friends or family as guinea pigs - always works for me. ;)
And I could probably think up some other problems with it if I wanted to but for now I'm going to close up shop and call it a night.
After all, this is only making me hungry and we don't need
that.
